No results showing

[HS2005]

I want to select thread names but i do not get any results. I know my query isn't right.
But i would like to know what i am doing wrong.

In PHPMYadmin:

PHP Code:

SELECT * 
FROM `(TABLE PREFIX)`.`thread` 
WHERE (
`title` LIKE '%a%'
)
LIMIT 0 , 30 


And my code:

PHP Code:

    $itemcount = $db->query_first(" 
        SELECT COUNT(`uid`) AS `itemcount` 
        FROM `" . TABLE_PREFIX . "thread` WHERE title LIKE '" . $letter . "%'"); 


Thanks