Determination of nicotine in newborn meconium by high-Resolution ambient mass spectrometry using wooden-Tip spray

Xinrong Wang; Mingyu Yang; Hui Xiao; Danping Liu; Lu Pan; Liuyang Zhang; Yan Yang; Qing Lu; Yanqiu Liu; Xiao Yang; Bicheng Yang

doi:10.3389/fchem.2023.1122137

Determination of nicotine in newborn meconium by high-Resolution ambient mass spectrometry using wooden-Tip spray

Front Chem. 2023 Jan 19:11:1122137. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2023.1122137. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xinrong Wang^{1

2}, Mingyu Yang³, Hui Xiao^{1

2}, Danping Liu^{1

2}, Lu Pan^{1

2}, Liuyang Zhang^{1

2}, Yan Yang^{1

2}, Qing Lu^{1

2}, Yanqiu Liu^{1

2}, Xiao Yang^{1

2}, Bicheng Yang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Birth Defect Prevention and Control, Jiangxi Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Nanchang, China.
² Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Nanchang Medical College, Nanchang, China.
³ The First Clinical Medical School, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, China.

Abstract

Prenatal exposure to nicotine that are mainly produced from tobacco smoke has been reported to affect infants. Therefore, nicotine exposure is one of important health concerns for newborn screening. Detecting nicotine and its metabolites such as cotinine in meconium were widely used to evaluate the tobacco exposure of pregnancy. In this study, disposable wooden tips were applied for touch sampling of meconium from newborn infants, and then were directly mounted on mass spectrometer (MS) to perform rapid screening of nicotine and cotinine. Choice of extraction/spray solvents was optimized. The limits of detection, reproducibility, linear response for direct analysis of meconium were also investigated. It is found the limits of detection (S/N = 3) to be as low as 0.36 ng/mg and 1.18 ng/mg for nicotine and cotinine, respectively, while the limits of quantitation (S/N = 10) to be 1.19 ng/mg and 3.94 ng/mg for nicotine and cotinine, respectively. The relative standard deviations (RSD) were found to be at 8.4%-19.8% (n = 6) for nicotine and cotinine, a good linear range from 5-500 ng/mL (R ² > 0.99). These analytical performances are well-accepted levels for ambient mass spectrometer analysis. In this study, evaluation of nicotine and cotinine in 22 puerpera volunteers were conducted by the established wooden-tip spray mass spectrometry (WTS-MS). These results showed that wooden-tip spray mass spectrometry would be useful for newborn screening of nicotine and cotinine in meconium with high reproducibility, speed, sensitivity, and specificity. Owing to the use of disposable wooden tips that involves no sample preparation and no chromatographic separation, our results show that wooden-tip spray mass spectrometry is a powerful tool for determination of nicotine in newborn meconium.

Keywords: ambient mass spectrometry; electrospray ionization; meconium; nicotine; wooden tip.

Grants and funding

This study received funding from Jiangxi provincial key research and development program (Nos: 20181BBG70032 and No. 20202BBG73015). The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.