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In 1981, an unknown disease appeared in Spain, the Spanish Toxic Oil Syndrome. Nowadays and despite all efforts, the etiological agent is still unknown. Early studies showed a link between this illness and the consumption of denatured rapeseed oil fraudulently processed and marketed as edible oil. Two families of aniline derivatives present in these oils (fatty acid anilides and acylated phenyl amino propanediol derivatives or PAPs) were found to be good chemical markers of toxic oils. In this work, a new method has been developed to analyze these aniline derivatives in oil samples by HPLC-MS and. HPLC-MS/MS with an API source. For their quantification, three different internal standards were used, one for anilides and two for PAPs. Quantification limits were 8 ppm for anilides and 0.2 ppm for PAPs. Anilides and PAPs were found in marker-positive samples at levels up to 50 000 and 330 ppm, respectively. The relative abundance of the different fatty acid anilides and PAPs correlates with the fatty acid composition of the oils. More than 2600 different samples were analyzed by this method in the most exhaustive screening of suspected toxic oils carried out to date.

Abstract: The removal of uremic toxins by zeolites is investigated in the context of the exploration of alternative methods to blood purification by dialysis. The case of a partially protein bound molecule, p-cresol, is studied here. High silica MFI type zeolites show a selective adsorption for p-cresol without major ion exchange with the cations present under equilibrium conditions in solution. Adsorption isotherms in different media were performed: pure water, artificial blood serum containing bovine serum albumin and human serum (HS obtained from a pool of 50 dialysis patients). p-Cresol elimination levels of 80–85% were obtained under in vitro conditions. However, in HS, p-cresol affinities for the zeolites are generally reduced as compared with pure water due to a partial obstruction of the pore system by adsorption of proteins on the external surface of zeolites particles. These results show that zeolites can be successfully employed as specific adsorbents for uremic toxins but without direct contact with serum albumin, which means only in the ultra-filtrate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]