The study aims at appraising gender differences in health-related practices, and health behaviour among university students of the Khon Kaen University, northeast Thailand, using a self-administered questionnaire. Of 539 university students, there were 155 males, 384 females, with mean ages 19.7 (+/- 1.2) and 19.6 (+/- 1.1) years, respectively. Persistent health problems were not significantly different between male and female students (12.9% vs. 15.4%). An average body mass index (BMI) was significantly different between male and female students (20.2 +/- 2.1 vs. 19.8 +/- 2.1). Female students reported positive health habits, in terms of drinking, smoking, sun protection, tooth brushing, fruit consumption, conscious efforts to avoid fat and cholesterol, over men, while regular exercise and safety belt use were more likely practised among male students. Using ANOVA and pairwise multiple comparisons, female students demonstrated better health eating habits than men (p = 0.0001). Coronary heart disease preventive habits between the medical and nonmedical faculty was greater for female students than for male students (p = 0.0006 for gender; p = 0.0001 for faculty). Health behaviour (combination of health eating habits, deliberate nutritional practices and coronary heart diseases preventive behaviour) was found to be better practised among women than men (p = 0.0001). These findings, therefore, should focus attention on university students as a target group for health education.

Consumption of alcohol beverage is legal and broadly accepted or tolerated in most parts of the world 1 including Thailand, a largely Buddhist nation situated in south-east Asia. It has been noticed that alcohol use and alcohol-related problems are on the increase over recent years. 2 Alcohol dependence increased 5.5 times during the period 1981-85 in Thailand 3 and a report from the Office of the Narcotics Control Board revealed that alcohol problems comprised about onethird of the persons with substance-related disorders who received treatment in hospitals in the north-east region of Thailand in 1995. 4 Alcohol use disorders ((AUD): including alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, and alcohol-related psychiatric disorders according to DSM-III-R 5 diagnostic classification) are Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (1999) AbstractA genetic epidemiological case-control study on aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) genotype and male probable alcohol use disorders (AUD) was performed in Khon Kaen province, northeast Thailand. One hundred and twenty-four of cases (probable AUD) were obtained from male villagers aged 18-65 years using the modified Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test-Thai version. The same number of controls were selected, being matched with the cases in terms of age (Ϯ4 years) within the same village. Marital status, education history and past or present histories of physical illnesses were essentially the same for the cases and the controls. All of the cases and 85.5% of the controls were current drinkers, and the cases tended to drink significantly more often than the controls. Genomic DNA was extracted from fingernails and ALDH2 genotypes were determined by polymerase chain reaction technique and digested by Ksp 632I. The ALDH2 genotypes of the cases and the controls were not significantly different: 90.3% versus 91.1% normal homozygote; 8.1% versus 8.9% heterozygote; and 1.6% versus 0.0% mutant homozygote, respectively. Among the normal homozygote, the daily amount of alcohol intakes of the cases were significantly larger than that of the controls (56.2 ± 40.6 g vs 8.1 ± 14.1 g), the same was found among the ALDH2 deficient (55.9 ± 43.4 vs 2.2 ± 5.8 g). Multivariate analysis based on the conditional logistic regression model showed no significant association of AUD with ALDH2 genotype, marital status, education history, or past history of injury, however, occupation and daily amount of alcohol intake were found to be significantly associated with AUD (OR = 10.72, 95% CI = 1.15 -99.99, P = 0.037, and OR = 1.12, 95% CI = 1.06 -1.18, P = 0.000, respectively). Nonfarmers showed 10.7 times larger risk of developing AUD compared to farmers, and the subjects had three times more chance of developing AUD for each increase of 10 g of the daily amount of alcohol intake.

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This study was aimed to validate the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test-Thai version (MAST-T) which was compared to the psychiatric diagnosis based on DSM-III-R This validation study of the MAST-Thai version underlines its applicability as a screening test for AUD among the northeast male Thai population .