Sensitive Quantification of
Nicotine in Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid by Acetone
Precipitation Combined With Isotope-Dilution Liquid Chromatography-Tandem
Mass Spectrometry
posted on 2021-05-25, 19:33authored byBaoyun Xia, Benjamin C. Blount, Lanqing Wang
The
United States experienced an outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping,
product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) that began in August 2019.
Patient diagnosis and treatment sometimes involved bronchoscopy and
collection of the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid. Although this
matrix has been useful for understanding some chemical exposures in
the lungs, no methods existed for measuring the nicotine content.
Therefore, we developed a simple and sensitive method for measuring
nicotine in the BAL fluid. Nicotine was extracted from the BAL fluid
using acetone precipitation in a 96-well plate format to increase
the sample throughput (200 samples/day). We optimized liquid chromatography
column conditions (e.g., mobile phase, column temperature) and mass
spectrometry parameters to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and lower
limits of detection (LOD) for measuring nicotine in the BAL fluid.
The LOD for nicotine in the BAL fluid was 0.050 ng/mL at a sample
volume of 40 μL of the BAL fluid. The within-day and between-day
imprecision and bias were less than 10%. This method detected nicotine
in 15 of 43 BAL fluids from EVALI case patients. This method is useful
for understanding recent inhalational exposure to nicotine as part
of characterizing EVALI or similar illnesses.