Simultaneous and sensitive measurement of nicotine and cotinine in small amounts of human hair using liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry

Determination of hair nicotine by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

“…This sample amount is 2-20 times lower than the previously reported assays [4,7,10,11,[13][14][15][16][17] although the sensitivity of this developed assay is greater than those assays (0.05-3.5 ng/mg). There were also reported assays that used only 1-4 mg hair sample, however the quantitation levels were ≥0.10 ng/mg [5,6,18,19], which is much higher than this developed assay. Several assays were presented with better sensitivity (0.01-0.03 ng/mg), nevertheless, a large amount of hair sample (20-100 mg) was employed [20][21][22].…”

“…Therefore, LLE has been the preferred method. Generally, solvent evaporation is required in LLE as it uses large volume of organic solvent (2-10 mL) [4][5][6] and uses solvent such as diethyl ether [5,8,13,25] that is not suitable for subsequent instrumental analysis. These solvents therefore need to be removed or concentrated prior to chromatographic analysis in order to produce assay with good sensitivity.…”

“…It determines the sensitivity, simplicity, time and cost implication of an assay. Extraction of nicotine from hair is normally done by either liquid-liquid (LLE) [4][5][6][7][8][9] or by solid phase (SPE) [10][11][12] followed by solvent evaporation and salt formation steps. These steps are time consuming and may lead to loss of nicotine which is a highly volatile compound, thus reducing the robustness and sensitivity of an assay.…”

Prevalence and correlates of environmental tobacco smoke exposure among adolescents in Mangolia

“…17,18 Other samples such as hair, toe and finger nails could be used to validate reports of long term exposure. [19][20][21][22] However, the present study used a standardized questionnaire that enables within country and cross-country comparisons of ETS exposure. Secondly, the sample was recruited from school-going adolescents and therefore may not be representative of all adolescents in the study area.…”

The Secondhand Smoke Exposure Scale (SHSES): A hair nicotine validated tool for assessing exposure to secondhand smoke among elderly adults in primary care

“…This renders hair nicotine as a safe measure towards assessing SHS and conducting a study with accuracy on adults. While collecting hair sample is time efficient, it could also add more validity to the study, since substances are found in higher levels and more easily than in tissues 26,27 Questionnaires may lack precision to quantify low levels of SHS exposure and are subject to recall and reporting bias , which may result to some degree of misclassification 15 . Furthermore, they are reported to be a "complementary" method rather than alternative ones, due to the fact that they can only be used to diminish another method's limitations 24 .…”