Analyses of nicotine and cotinine in tissues by capillary gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Selective extraction and chromatographic techniques have been developed to measure low nanogram quantities of nicotine and cotinine in tissues. Analyses were performed by capillary column gas chromatography with a specific nitrogen-phosphorus detector and by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. With close structural analogues for internal standards, high quantitative accuracy and precision were demonstrated for the range 5-1000 ng per g of tissue. The sensitivity limit was 2-3 ng/g for both compounds. The advantage of these techniques compared to previously published methods is increased selectivity; the other methods were developed for analysis of biological fluids and are not readily adaptable to more complex biological matrices such as tissue homogenates. With the newly developed techniques, we were able to perform a pharmacokinetic study of nicotine and cotinine in mouse liver following a single intraperitoneal injection of nicotine.