Source attribution profiling of five species of Amanita mushrooms from four European countries by high resolution liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry combined with multivariate statistical analysis and DNA-barcoding.

Source attribution profiling of five species of Amanita mushrooms from four European countries was performed using Liquid Chromatography-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LC-HRMS) combined with multivariate statistical analysis. Initially, species determination was carried out morphologically and was verified by DNA-analysis. This data was then combined with chemical profiling, generated from LC-HRMS full scan analysis. The untargeted data was processed and the 720 most abundant peaks in the LC-HRMS chromatogram were used to build a multivariate PLS-DA model. The two independent methods for species determination showed 100% correlation, indicating the potential use of chemical profiling as a supporting technique to genetic methods. When specimens of one species were studied, significant variation related to the region of growth was found. The potential of the geo-positioning was shown for A. phalloides from Sweden, Denmark and UK and A. virosa from Sweden and Denmark. Additionally, A. virosa specimens could be attributed to three geographically different regions of Sweden.

Potential release of aluminum and other metals by food-grade aluminum foil used for skin allograft cryo preservation.

Since 1991, the skin bank of the Queen Astrid Military Hospital uses food-grade aluminum foil as a primary support for storing cryo preserved human donor skin (511 donors). The possible release of heavy metals into the cryo preservation media (30% (v/v) glycerol in physiological water) and the possible impact this release could have on the quality of the cryo preserved donor skin was evaluated. Aluminum was the principal detection target. Possible contaminants of the aluminum foil as such (arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead) were also investigated. The evaluation was set up after a Belgian Competent Authority inspection remark. Aluminum was detected at a concentration of 1.4 mg/l, arsenic and lead were not detected, while cadmium and chromium were detected in trace element quantities. An histological analysis revealed no differences between cryo preserved and fresh donor skin. No adverse reactions in patients, related to the presence of aluminum or heavy metal traces, were reported since the introduction of the cryo preserved donor skin in our burn wound centre.