With the advent of next-generation sequencing, large-scale initiatives for mining whole genomes and exomes have been employed to better understand global or population-level genetic architecture. India encompasses more than 17% of the world population with extensive genetic diversity, but is under-represented in the global sequencing datasets. This gave us the impetus to perform and analyze the whole genome sequencing of 1029 healthy Indian individuals under the pilot phase of the ‘IndiGen’ program. We generated a compendium of 55,898,122 single allelic genetic variants from geographically distinct Indian genomes and calculated the allele frequency, allele count, allele number, along with the number of heterozygous or homozygous individuals. In the present study, these variants were systematically annotated using publicly available population databases and can be accessed through a browsable online database named as ‘IndiGenomes’ http://clingen.igib.res.in/indigen/. The IndiGenomes database will help clinicians and researchers in exploring the genetic component underlying medical conditions. Till date, this is the most comprehensive genetic variant resource for the Indian population and is made freely available for academic utility. The resource has also been accessed extensively by the worldwide community since it's launch.

Introduction: Violence and aggression are a major concern in acute inpatient psychiatric wards. Hard outcome data on the impact of service change are scarce. This poster presents the outcomes of service changes designed to improve the acute ward environment and patient experience. Aims and objectives: To implement changes to the delivery of acute inpatient psychiatric services and to measure the outcome of these changes in objective verifiable form. Method: Significant changes were introduced to an acute psychiatric inpatient service. These included introducing a dedicated inpatient psychiatrist "hospitalist", replacing weekly ward rounds with daily multidisciplinary care and discharge planning meetings and promoting increased roles for nursing staff in decision-making and patient contact. Outcomes measured included routinely recorded incidents of violence with and without injury, use of restraint for medication and use of constant nursing observation. The control group was a similar service in the same hospital subject to the same general policies and admitting patients demographically comparable, but that did not at the time undergo the interventions implemented in the trial service. All data was recorded by staff who were unaware of this study or even that any analysis of the data would occur. Results and conclusions: Violent incidents in the intervention ward dropped by 34% per patient (p=< 0.02) whilst increasing by 3% in the control ward; restraints decreased by 28% (p=ns) whilst increasing by 12% in the control ward; with an overall reduction in constant observation. The intervention was highly effective in reducing violent incidents.

Aim: Numerous drugs are being widely prescribed for COVID-19 treatment without any direct evidence for the drug safety/efficacy in patients across diverse ethnic populations. Materials & methods: We analyzed whole genomes of 1029 Indian individuals (IndiGen) to understand the extent of drug–gene (pharmacogenetic), drug–drug and drug–drug–gene interactions associated with COVID-19 therapy in the Indian population. Results: We identified 30 clinically significant pharmacogenetic variants and 73 predicted deleterious pharmacogenetic variants. COVID-19-associated pharmacogenes were substantially overlapped with those of metabolic disorder therapeutics. CYP3A4, ABCB1 and ALB are the most shared pharmacogenes. Fifteen COVID-19 therapeutics were predicted as likely drug–drug interaction candidates when used with four CYP inhibitor drugs. Conclusion: Our findings provide actionable insights for future validation studies and improved clinical decisions for COVID-19 therapy in Indians.

Background: The last decade has seen a tremendous growth in internet usage with 3,486,642,862 present users worldwide with India contributing 462,124,989 users. Out of this 70% are young. In this scenario there is also drastic increase in the prevalence of psychiatric illness among the same vulnerable group. A lot of studies have been conducted to bring out the association of the psychiatric disorders with internet addiction. This study aims to estimate the prevalence of internet addiction among college students and bring to light the degree of association of anxiety disorder with internet addiction.Methods: A cross sectional study is carried out in 2 arts colleges in Tirunelveli city among 200 students (aged 19-21 years) using internet addiction test by Dr. Kimberly young and anxiety rating by Hamilton anxiety scale.Results: Among the 200 students, only 22% did not have internet addiction. 52% are average on-line users, 20% are possible addicts and 6% are addicts. Among these 59.6% had mild anxiety, 22.4% moderate anxiety and 17.9% suffered severe anxiety. 56.4% had anxious mood and fear and 38.5% suffer intellectual deterioration, 30.8% had depressed mood. 33.3% had experienced muscular somatic symptoms, 23% autonomic, 14.1% gastrointestinal symptoms and 7.7% cardiovascular symptoms and 24% respiratory symptoms.Conclusions: Internet addiction is an emerging health issue among youth, if left unattended will compromise the mental and physical well being of the youth. It is also mandate that a holistic education program that is based on positive youth constructs is the need of the hour.

Skin diseases are the leading cause of morbidity in children. As children spend most of their time in schools, training teachers on the detection of skin changes and timely referral will prevent or reduce the complications. Hence, we propose a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of training for teachers in the early identification of skin disorders among primary school children in a rural area of southern India. The teachers of government and government-aided schools in the field practice area of Model Rural Health Research Unit, Tirunelveli, will be the intervention group. The teachers of the same schools in the nearby village will be the control group. The investigators and the National Institute of Epidemiology, ICMR, Chennai, will develop and validate the training manual. Using the manual, the principal investigator will train the teachers on identifying and referring skin changes and provide a training manual, model register, and referral slip to each teacher. The investigators will review the schools quarterly and collect the number of children identified and referred from both groups before and after the intervention. Thus, the trained teachers will be a resource to achieve the objectives of the school health program, complementing the health services.