Histologic abnormalities of large and small coronary arteries, neural structures, and the conduction system of the heart found in postmortem studies of individuals dying from the toxic oil syndrome.

Hundreds died and thousands were poisoned by rapeseed oil adulterated with aniline and sold illegally in Spain in 1981. The clinical manifestations, now known as the toxic oil syndrome, include pulmonary hypertension and right ventricular hypertrophy plus widespread vascular and neural lesions in other organs. Many of the late deaths ended with a scleroderma-like illness. Because scleroderma involves the heart, in this study we examined the small and large coronary arteries, neural structures, and conduction system from eight victims dying with the toxic oil syndrome. Dense fibrosis of the sinus node in two hearts resembled changes found in scleroderma. Atrionodal junctional hemorrhages and cystic degeneration of the sinus node present in the other six hearts resembled changes found in lupus erythematosus. Small and large coronary arteries exhibited focal fibromuscular dysplasia and a proliferative cystic myointimal degeneration. This latter abnormality was associated with sloughing of the inner wall and embolization of the detached fragment downstream in the same coronary artery. Every heart had many degenerative lesions within nerves, ganglia, and the coronary chemoreceptor. Both the arterial and neural abnormalities prominently involved the conduction system. Based upon observations by others with experimental feeding of rapeseed oil containing either high or low erucic acid, we suggest that this oil must remain a major suspected cause of the toxic oil syndrome, particularly in conjunction with some as yet unexplained facilitative influence by oleoanilids. If this is so, it is important to reconsider the widely recommended use of any rapeseed oil product as a suitable food for man or other animals.