Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, College of Pharmacy, Chung-Ang University, 84 Heukseok-ro, Dongjak-gu, Seoul 06974, Korea.
Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Citrus Research and Education Center, University of Florida, 700 Experiment Station Rd, Lake Alfred, FL 33850, USA.
Molecules. 2020 Apr 11;25(8):1763. doi: 10.3390/molecules25081763.
Many studies have analyzed nicotine metabolites in blood and urine to determine the toxicity caused by smoking, and assess exposure to cigarettes. Recently, hair and nails have been used as alternative samples for the evaluation of smoking, as not only do they reflect long-term exposure but they are also stable and easy to collect. Liquid-liquid or solid-phase extraction has mainly been used to detect nicotine metabolites in biological samples; however, these have disadvantages, such as the use of toxic organic solvents and complex pretreatments. In this study, a modified QuEChERS method was proposed for the first time to prepare samples for the detection of nicotine metabolite cotinine (COT) and -3'-hydroxycotinine (3-HCOT) in hair and nails. High-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was used to analyze traces of nicotine metabolites. The established method was validated for selectivity, linearity, lower limit of quantitation, accuracy, precision and recovery. In comparison with conventional liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), the proposed method was more robust, and resulted in higher recoveries with favorable analytical sensitivity. Using this method, clinical samples from 26 Korean infants were successfully analyzed. This method is expected to be applicable in the routine analysis of nicotine metabolites for environmental and biological exposure monitoring.
许多研究都分析了血液和尿液中的尼古丁代谢物，以确定吸烟造成的毒性，并评估香烟的暴露情况。最近，头发和指甲已被用作评估吸烟的替代样本，因为它们不仅反映了长期暴露，而且稳定且易于采集。液-液或固相萃取主要用于检测生物样本中的尼古丁代谢物;然而，这些方法有一些缺点，例如使用有毒有机溶剂和复杂的预处理。在这项研究中，首次提出了一种改良的 QuEChERS 方法，用于制备头发和指甲中尼古丁代谢物可替宁（COT）和-3'-羟基可替宁（3-HCOT）检测的样品。高效液相色谱-串联质谱法（LC-MS/MS）用于分析痕量尼古丁代谢物。该方法经过选择性、线性、定量下限、准确性、精密度和回收率的验证。与传统的液-液萃取（LLE）相比，该方法更稳健，回收率更高，分析灵敏度更高。使用该方法，成功分析了 26 名韩国婴儿的临床样本。该方法有望应用于环境和生物暴露监测中尼古丁代谢物的常规分析。
