Academic stress is the most common mental state that medical students experience during their training period. To assess academic stress, to find out its determinants, to assess other sources of stress and to explore the various coping styles against academic stress adopted by students. Methods: It was a cross sectional study done among medical students from first to fourth year. Standard self-administered questionnaires were used to assess academic stress and coping behaviour. Mean age of the 400 participants was 20.3 ± 1.5 years. 166(41.5%) of them were males. The academic stress was found to be of mild, moderate and severe level among 68(17%), 309(77.3%) and 23(5.7%) participants respectively. Overall coping with stress was found to be poor, average and good among 15(3.8%), 380(95%) and 5(1.2%) participants respectively. Passive emotional (p = 0.054) and passive problem (p = 0.001) coping behaviours were significantly better among males. Active problem coping behaviour (p = 0.007) was significantly better among females. Active emotional coping behaviour did not vary significantly between genders (p = 0.54). Majority of the students preferred sharing their personal problems with parents 211(52.7%) followed by friends 202(50.5%). Binary logistic regression analysis found worrying about future (p = 0.023) and poor self-esteem (p = 0.026) to be independently associated with academic stress. Academic stress although a common finding among students, the coping style to deal with it, was good only in a few. The coping behaviours were not satisfactory particularly among male participants. This along with other determinants of academic stress identified in this study need to be addressed during counselling sessions.

Background: Though there is a lot of literature available about presence of carcinogenic chemicals in these products, there is lack of information regarding the microbial composition of these products. Aim & Objective: The study was conducted with the objective of assessing microbial composition of smokeless tobacco products and factors associated with higher colony count. Methodology: This cross sectional study included a total of 43 samples obtained from four districts of Karnataka namely Udupi, Bengaluru, Bidar and Belagavi. Microbial populations were assessed using quantitative aerobic culture and colony forming units per gram was reported for each sample. The data was entered into excel and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 16.0. Results have been expressed as frequencies and percentages. Univarate analysis was done to study association between background characteristics and higher colony counts. Results: All except three samples showed bacterial contamination. Two samples showed pathogenic bacterial growth, while the other 38 samples had non-pathogenic bacteria. There was no association between background characteristics and colony counts. Conclusions: Microbial contamination of smokeless tobacco products is common. There is a need to further investigate various factors associated with microbial contamination so that necessary interventions can be implemented.

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