Smartphone addiction results in mental health disorders, especially among youth. Only a few studies are done among youth in rural areas. This study was conducted to find the association of anxiety, depression and stress in relation to smartphone addiction in rural undergraduate students. A cross-sectional survey was done among university students in the rural part of south India in 2018. 684 students from four different colleges participated in the study, and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Smartphone Addiction Scale – Shorted version questionnaire (SAS-SV) scales were used. Descriptive analysis in terms of mean, standard deviation and categorical analysis as percentages and frequencies were applied. Overall 413 (60.4%) students were using smartphones, and the prevalence of smartphone addiction was around 26.8% and was found to be common among males than females (p<<0.001). Depression and stress were progressively greater with increasing usage across the three groups (p<<0.001). There was statistically significant weak positive correlation between the total depression (r=0.16; p<0.001), anxiety (r=0.10; p<0.05), and stress scores (r=0.24; p<0.001) with total addiction scores. Simple linear regression showed that with one unit increase in addiction scores there was a significant increase in depression (? = 0.156, p = 0.002), anxiety (?=0.098,p=0.046), and stress scores (?=0.236,p<0.001) and multiple linear regression showed stress was more significantly associated with addiction than depression and anxiety (B= 0.243; p<0.001). Alarming higher prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress among rural college students is a serious concern. Life skills education would address these growing public health problems.

Drug utilization of oral hypoglycemic agents (OHAs) in a private healthcare setting is useful to examine the prescribing pattern of OHAs, especially the newer fixed dose combination (FDC) products. This study was aimed to evaluate the prescribing pattern of OHAs indicated for Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), to determine the costs of OHAs prescribed and total cost per prescription in the treatment of T2DM in an outpatient department of a private hospital located in central Malaysia. Retrospective review of electronic medical record (EMR) study design was adopted. Patient’s demographic characteristics, medications prescribed, prescribers’ details and cost per prescription were documented. Defined daily dose (DDD) of OHAs and drug cost were calculated. Research ethics protocol was approved and no personal data was collected. Out of the 396 EMR screened, 135 fulfilled the inclusion criteria and subsequently were analysed. In term of demography, mean age of the sample was 51 years old with 59% were male and ethnicity composition of 71% Malay and 19% Chinese. Metformin and “metformin+dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor” (DPP-4i) were the most commonly prescribed single-drug and FDC OHA, respectively. Average cost of OHAs and total cost per prescription was less than USD 68 and USD 185, respectively. Meanwhile, FDC covered 28.91% of incidences of prescriptions, but 44.6% of cost and SGTL-2i covered 9% incidences of prescriptions and 16.29% of cost. Prescribing pattern of OHA was appropriate based on patient’s T2DM diagnosis, however, dosage given were not in accordance with WHO DDD.