Emergency screening for ethylene glycol in serum.

We have exploited the "interference" of ethylene glycol in the Du Pont aca triglyceride method to develop a convenient and rapid screening method for detecting ethylene glycol in serum. Pretreatment of patient's serum with lipase, glycerol kinase, and other cofactors usually added for triglyceride analysis removes triglycerides and glycerol, but not ethylene glycol, from the sample. The aca triglyceride method may then be used to estimate the ethylene glycol concentration in serum.