SIMPLE AND SENSITIVE METHOD FOR DETERMINATION OF NICOTINE IN PLASMA BY GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHY

Smoking and other forms of nicotine consumption are among the most imp ortant risk factors for cardiovascular disease and cancer. Many of the cessation therapies require administration of nicotine. Accordingly, precision analysis for nicotine in plasma has become increasingly impo rtant. Several of the recently published methods require elaborate sam ple handling and/or processing. We report a simple, rapid and reliable gas chromatography method with a high sensitivity for determination o f unchanged nicotine in plasma, which can be used in the processing an d quantification of large series of nicotine samples, e.g., in clinica l trials of nicotine-based smoking or tobacco cessation drug delivery systems. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.