Determination of nicotine in Libyan smokers' urine compared with that of nonsmokers using reversed phase-high performance liquid Chromatog-raphy (RP-HPLC)

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the levels of nicotine in twenty urine sam- ples taken from ten smokers and ten non-smokers in Libya. Each volunteer was required to com- plete a questionnaire before providing the urine sample. The evaluation of the nicotine concentra- tions was carried out by means of a simple, rapid, cost effective but reliable, one-step extraction technique-reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography which was developed and vali- dated for this purpose. The criteria and factors taken into consideration for this evaluation and vali- dation include the linearity, precision, accuracy, limit of detection, and limit of quantitation. The urine samples from the smokers presented nicotine concentrations in the range of 0.037-1.979 μg/ml, with an average of 0.663 μg/ml. The range of the nicotine concentrations in non-smokers, on the other hand, was from 0.017-1.331 g/ml, where 0.273 μg/ml is the average value. Statistical analyses show that the nicotine concentrations were very significant in the smoker samples in con- trast with the nonsmoker samples.