BACKGROUND: Although molecular pathway information and the International HapMap 
Project data can help biomedical researchers to investigate the aetiology of 
complex diseases more effectively, such information is missing or insufficient 
in current genetic association databases. In addition, only a few of the 
environmental risk factors are included as gene-environment interactions, and 
the risk measures of associations are not indexed in any association databases.
DESCRIPTION: We have developed a published association database (PADB; 
http://www.medclue.com/padb) that includes both the genetic associations and the 
environmental risk factors available in PubMed database. Each genetic risk 
factor is linked to a molecular pathway database and the HapMap database through 
human gene symbols identified in the abstracts. And the risk measures such as 
odds ratios or hazard ratios are extracted automatically from the abstracts when 
available. Thus, users can review the association data sorted by the risk 
measures, and genetic associations can be grouped by human genes or molecular 
pathways. The search results can also be saved to tab-delimited text files for 
further sorting or analysis. Currently, PADB indexes more than 1,500,000 PubMed 
abstracts that include 3442 human genes, 461 molecular pathways and about 
190,000 risk measures ranging from 0.00001 to 4878.9.
CONCLUSION: PADB is a unique online database of published associations that will 
serve as a novel and powerful resource for reviewing and interpreting huge 
association data of complex human diseases.