Carotidynia: new aspects of a controversial entity.

Idiopathic carotidynia or Fay syndrome is a little known pathology, which in the past was the subject of much controversy. Even though carotydinia was removed as a pathological entity from the second International Headache Society classification in 2004, recent reports seem to confirm that the disease demonstrates unusual radiological findings. The presence of a typical amorphous enhancing soft tissue surrounding the carotid artery by MRI, CT and ultrasonography in patients with carotidynia has reopened discussion on the hypothesis that carotidynia may represent a distinctive inflammatory process. The aetiology of carotidynia is unknown. We report a case of carotidynia that developed after an upper airway infection, wherein MR studies demonstrated typical enhanced tissue surrounding the common carotid artery in contiguity with pathological enhancement in laryngeal tissue.

Multi-residue analysis of tranquillizers in meat: confirmatory assays using mass spectrometry.

A rapid and sensitive multi-residue method was developed to attempt to confirm the presence of the beta-blocker carazolol and the tranquillizers acepromazine, azaperone, chlorpromazine, propionylpromazine and xylazine in pig muscle tissues. The procedure involves determination by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. The liquid chromatographic separation was performed on a Symmetry C18 column with gradient elution. A mixture of aqueous buffer, containing 0.01% m/v trifluoroacetic acid (pH 3.5), and acetonitrile at a flow rate of 0.4 ml min-1 was used as the mobile phase. The abundant parent ions [M+ H+] produced by positive electrospray ionisation were selected for collisional dissociation with argon. Fragment ions were recorded with daughter ion scan and multiple reaction monitoring. The analytes were identified unambiguously by assessing retention times and diagnostic ions in meat samples spiked from 50 micrograms kg-1 [maximum residue limit (MRL) for azaperone and azaperol] to 5 micrograms kg-1 (MRL for carazolol).