Are melamine and cyanuric acid present in crystals from affected cats and dogs?
Yes. Recent studies at University of Guelph have tentatively identified the composition of the crystals as a combination of melamine and cyanuric acid. Fourier-transformed Infra Red Spectrograms of in-vitro precipitated crystals matched spectra from crystals obtained from cat urine. This suggests that the crystals are composed of melamine and cyanuric acid. Is melamine cyanurate crystalluria a plausible hypothesis? Yes. While we did not originally know how melamine alone could cause crystalluria, there is evidence that melamine precipitates with cyanuric acid. This precipitation reaction is used in monitoring cyanuric acid concentration in pool water (the so-called CYA test), in which melamine monomer is added to a sample of pool water. If sufficient cyanuric acid is present, the sample become cloudy. We now suspect that a similar reaction is occurring in affected patients. Thus, it now appears that while neither melamine nor cyanuric acid are toxic as sole chemicals, they combine to f