The pharmacokinetics (PK) of nicotine uptake with new generation products such as electronic cigarettes (e-cigs), tobacco heating products (TBH) and others is an essential criterion for evaluating the performance of the product. When using new generation products, the nicotine uptake is frequently found to be much lower as compared to conventional cigarettes, sometimes even hardly exceeding the common background levels in human blood samples of non-users. Therefore, apart from having a highly sensitive analytical method for quantification of nicotine in serum or plasma, it is of paramount importance to reduce the ubiquitously occurring nicotine background levels as far as possible. This is required to be performed both for the blood sample collection (the clinic) on the one side, as well as for the analysis (the laboratory) on the other side.

In this presentation, we will provide an overview of provisions and their effectiveness to lower the nicotine background levels at both sides mentioned above so that a limit of quantification for nicotine of 0.1-0.2 ng/ml in serum or plasma can be achieved. Furthermore, we will present validation and application data of an UPLC-MS/MS method, which we have developed for the described purpose.