API to determine if a product exist in any Virtual catalogs

I have a requirement to remove a included product from a virtual catalog
and 
remove it from the base catalog if it is not used in any other virtual 
catalogs. 

Is there an API for doing this sort of functionality. Hoping not to have
to 
traverse every catalog and determine it is virtual and then check if a
rule 
exist for a given SKU.

Thanks,

JES