Specific detection of anabasine, nicotine, and nicotine metabolites in urine by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

The sensitive and specific detection of nicotine, its metabolites, and the tobacco alkaloid anabasine is useful in evaluating the success of smoking cessation treatments and detecting tobacco use, passive exposure, and nontobacco nicotine exposure in potential transplant recipients, insurance clients, and elective surgical patients. Rapid sample preparation and extended high-performance liquid chromatographic separation of tobacco alkaloids and metabolites was interfaced with tandem mass spectrometry. By using deuterated internal standards and appropriate confirmatory ion mass transitions, direct injection of centrifugally clarified urine was possible. The method had excellent precision, limit of quantitation, and linearity. The rigorous separation method revealed an interferent of nicotine that had coeluted with anabasine in more rapid chromatography and that may result in tobacco use misclassification. The method provides more specific detection of tobacco exposure and illustrates the potential of centrifugal clarification for sample preparation in the detection of multiple analytes in urine.