A national registry to determine the distribution and prevalence of Parkinson's disease in Thailand: implications of urbanization and pesticides as risk factors for Parkinson's disease.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) occurs worldwide but prior to this review of data from the Thailand Parkinson's Disease Registry there had been no nationwide PD registry reported globally.

Objective: To determine the distribution and prevalence of PD in Thailand and related risk factors in order to more adequately develop and allocate prevention and treatment resources where they are most needed and to ascertain risk factors that are specific to the Thai population.

Design: The Thailand Parkinson's Disease Registry is a new resource, and data collection began in March 2008.

Immunogenicity and safety of two doses of a paediatric hepatitis A vaccine in thai children: comparison of three vaccination schedules.

As fewer children in Thailand are exposed to hepatitis A virus (HAV) and so do not have seroprotective anti-HAV antibodies, they are becoming an important source of HAV transmission. A flexible HAV vaccination schedule would facilitate incorporation of the vaccine into existing immunization programmes, and we compared the immunogenicity and safety of three HAV immunization schedules. An open, randomized, clinical trial was carried out in which healthy children were given a primary dose of the inactivated hepatitis A vaccine, Avaxim 80 paediatric, with a booster dose 6, 12 or 18 months later.

Genetic variations of human herpesvirus 7 by analysis of glycoproteins B and H, and R2-repeat regions.

Clinical isolates of human herpesvirus 7 (HHV-7) from the saliva of healthy individual were investigated for genetic variations in the regions of two immediate-early (IE) genes, the glycoprotein B (gB) and glycoprotein H (gH) genes, and in R2-repeat. The genomic DNA of 24 isolates from citizens of Thailand, Japan, and the United States was amplified to detect size variations in the IE-1 and IE-2 loci, but none was observed, suggesting that there was no deletion or insertion in these genes, in contrast with an IE gene of human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6). The sequences of the gB gene from isolates acquired from 5 Japanese and 8 Thai subject were then compared with those of American strains JI and RK with respect to codons that are known to differentiate gB alleles.