Abstract:
Cigarette smoking is the main cause of death and disease in our society. It, clearly has a
dangerous impact on the health of smokers and other people around them, alongside economic
issues for the smokers. Nicotine is merely one among the several thousands of compounds
identified in tobacco. The aim of this study was to determine of nicotine in blood samples in
smokers and nonsmokers by developement of a rapid, simple, reliable, and one-step extraction
method, in order to isolate and determine nicotine in human plasma samples using Reversed
Phase - High Performance Liquid Chromatography (RP-HPLC), constituting liquid–liquid
extraction with binary solvents to get better detection limit, linearity over high range, recovery,
and no interference peaks. In the present study, twenty blood samples are collected from smokers
and nonsmokers in El-Beida City, Libya. Samples are taken from an volunteer at the same time
after each volunteer fills during a questionnaire. The method of analysis is validated over a wide
linear range of 1.62–162.12 µg/mL with correlation coefficients being consistently greater than
0.9999. The results of nicotine concentrations in male smokers’ plasma are within the range of
3.292 - 66.398 µg/mL with an average of 11.950 µg/mL. Whereas its concentrations in nonsmokers’plasma are in the range of 3.3004 - 9.001 µg/mL with an average of 4.624 µg/mL. The
average of the concentrations of nicotine in smokers’plasma is greater than non-smokers plasma.
The criteria considered for validation are: limit of detection, limit of quantitation, linearity,
accuracy, precision and confidence limit. Statistical analysis show that the nicotine levels were
significant difference within the smoker samples in contrast with the nonsmoker samples using
RP-HPLC method.
