Simple selected ion monitoring capillary gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method for the determination of cotinine in serum, urine and oral samples.

A capillary gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method using selected ion monitoring was developed for the analysis of cotinine in urine, serum and oral samples. The procedure requires 500 microliters of an oral sample, 250 microliters of a serum sample and 50 microliters of urine and can detect 5 ng/ml cotinine in oral samples, 10 ng/ml in serum and 50 ng/ml in urine with good precision and accuracy. The method was used to determine the cotinine concentration in samples of all three fluids collected from a group of smokers and non-smokers.