Nicotine metabolite ratios in serum and urine among US adults: variations across smoking status, gender and race/ethnicity

Abstract

Purpose: The objective of this study was to evaluate factors affecting variabilities in the observed levels of nicotine metabolite ratios in serum (NMR_S, N = 10,234) and urine (NMR_U, N = 2286) for US adults aged ≥20 years.

Materials and methods: Data from NHANES were used to fit regression models for log10 transformed values of NMR_S and NMR_U stratified by gender and smoking status.

Results: Females had higher NMR_S than males among both smokers and non-smokers. Females had lower NMR_U than males among both smokers and non-smokers. Smokers had lower levels of both NMR_S and NMR_U among both males and females. The order in which NMR_S by race/ethnicity was observed was non-Hispanic whites > Hispanics and others > non-Hispanic blacks. The order in which NMR_U by race/ethnicity was observed was non-Hispanic blacks > non-Hispanic whites > Hispanics and others. Most of the pairwise differences between non-Hispanic blacks and whites were statistically significant (p ≤ 0.02). Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) at home was associated with higher NMR_U among male smokers (2.13 vs. 1.41, p = 0.01).

Conclusions: Data on nicotine metabolite ratios can be used to study differences in how nicotine is metabolized by males and females and by smokers and non-smokers.

Keywords:

• Nicotine metabolite ratio
• gender
• race/ethnicity
• smoking, nicotine metabolism

Disclosure statement

Ram B. Jain declares that he had no financial and other conflicts that could have affected the conclusions arrived at in this communication. All data used for analysis for this study are in public domain and available free of charge at www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/index.htm.