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Background: Psychiatric co morbidities tend to occur quite frequently in patients of chronic respiratory diseases mainly bronchial asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) but still it is highly under diagnosed. Aim and objective of the study was to find out the prevalence of psychiatric co morbidities in asthma and COPD and to correlate them with disease severity according to Global Initiative against Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) and Global Initiative against Asthma (GINA) guidelines.Methods: Study was conducted in Department of TB and Chest in association with Department of Psychiatry of Punjab Institute of Medical Sciences, a secondary care medical college in north India. A total 204 patients, 68 of bronchial asthma, 68 0f COPD and 68 were controls included in the study. Diagnosis and severity of respiratory diseases was assessed by spirometry. Evaluation of psychiatric co morbidities was done using the MINI international neuropsychiatric interview questionnaire.Results: The frequency of psychiatric co morbidities in COPD patients was significantly higher (32.4%) compared to patients of bronchial asthma (20.6%). The most common co morbidity in both arms was generalized anxiety disorder (17.6% in COPD patients and 10.3% in patients of bronchial asthma.Conclusions: COPD patients have a higher frequency of psychiatric co morbidities compared to bronchial asthma patients and control population. These should be properly screened and treated.

Objectives Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), can survive inside the host granuloma courtesy the various extrinsic and intrinsic factors involved. Continuous use or misuse of the anti TB drugs over the years has led to the development of resistance in MTB against antibiotics. Drug-resistant TB in particular has been a menace since treating it requires exposing the patient to drugs for a prolonged period of time. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant TB cases have increased over the years mostly due to the exposure of MTB to suboptimal levels of drug. Proteasomes provide MTB its pathogenicity and hence helps it to survive inside the host even in the presence of drugs. Materials and Methods The recombinantly expressed proteasome accessory factor-C (PafC) protein was purified via Ni-NTA affinity chromatography and overexpressed in the nonpathogenic strain of mycobacteria (Mycobacterium smegmatis) for the comparative analysis of minimum inhibitory concentrations of antimycobacterial drugs. The bacteria were subjected to various stress conditions. Secretory nature of PafC was analyzed by probing the purified protein against patient sera. Quantitative mRNA analysis of pafC, lexA, and recA was performed to check for their level under fluoroquinolone (FQ) presence. The data were validated in clinical samples of pulmonary TB patients. Results pafC, that forms one part of paf operon, is involved in providing MTB its resistance against FQs. Through a series of experiments, we established the fact that PafC is upregulated in mycobacteria upon exposure to FQs and it leads to the increased intracellular survival of mycobacteria under the stresses generated by FQs. The study also refers to the correlation of pafC to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage repair enzymes lexA and recA at transcriptional level. The results obtained in vitro corroborated when the pulmonary TB patients’ samples were subjected to the same molecular analysis. Statistical Analysis All experiments were conducted at least in triplicate. p-Value of <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant Conclusion PafC plays a significant role in providing resistance to mycobacteria against FQ class of drugs by increasing its intracellular survival through increased drug efflux and getting involved with DNA damage repair machinery.