Effects of toxic oil syndrome on the psychological conditions of the descendants of affected persons.

OBJECTIVE: In May 1981, the Toxic Oil Syndrome (TOS) affected over 20,000 people, in Spain, as a result of the ingestion of rapeseed oil that had been denatured with 2% aniline. Amongst many physical and organic problems, many patients in this cohort showed different degrees of anxiety and depression. It can be hypothesized that their children might well be susceptible to suffer from anxiety, depression and other psychological disturbances. METHODS: Children with a father and/or mother included in the official TOS census, who were born between 1st January 1983 and 31st December 1989 and resided in Madrid (n. 420, response rate 84%), were compared against high-school children of TOS-free parents of the same age and similar socioeconomic status (n. 327). DATA COLLECTION: Spanish version of Goldberg and Hillier's General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-60) and Cattell's High School Personality Questionnaire (HSPQ). RESULTS: The only statistically significant difference between the two groups was the sleep disturbance factor of the GHQ-60 questionnaire. Significant differences were not observed in any of the personality factors (such as anxiety, depression, excitability and introversion) analysed by the HSPQ questionnaire when the exposed group was considered as a whole. However, in the replies to the HSPQ questionnaire, some statistically significant differences between exposed and non exposed children were detected in analyses carried out separately in each sex. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study tend to rule out any impairment of the mental health of children born from parents who had been TOS victims.

Neurologic outcomes of toxic oil syndrome patients 18 years after the epidemic.

Toxic oil syndrome (TOS) resulted from consumption of rapeseed oil denatured with 2% aniline and affected more than 20,000 persons. Eighteen years after the epidemic, many patients continue to report neurologic symptoms that are difficult to evaluate using conventional techniques. We conducted an epidemiologic study to determine whether an exposure to toxic oil 18 years ago was associated with current adverse neurobehavioral effects. We studied a case group of 80 adults exposed to toxic oil 18 years ago and a referent group of 79 adult age- and sex-frequency-matched unexposed subjects. We interviewed subjects for demographics, health status, exposures to neurotoxicants, and responses to the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT), Programa Integrado de Exploracion Neuropsicologica (PIEN), and Goldberg depression questionnaires and administered quantitative neurobehavioral and neurophysiologic tests by computer or trained nurses. The groups did not differ with respect to educational background or other critical variables. We examined associations between case and referent groups and the neurobehavioral and neurophysiologic outcomes of interest. Decreased distal strength of the dominant and nondominant hands and increased vibrotactile thresholds of the fingers and toes were significantly associated with exposure to toxic oil. Finger tapping, simple reaction time latency, sequence B latency, symbol digit latency, and auditory digit span were also significantly associated with exposure. Case subjects also had statistically significantly more neuropsychologic symptoms compared with referents. Using quantitative neurologic tests, we found significant adverse central and peripheral neurologic effects in a group of TOS patients 18 years after exposure to toxic oil when compared with a nonexposed referent group. These effects were not documented by standard clinical examination and were found more frequently in women.