A Systematic Review of Analytical Methods for the Separation of Nicotine Enantiomers and Evaluation of Nicotine Sources

Abstract

The introduction of synthetic nicotine by the tobacco industry, also promoted as tobacco-free nicotine, presented new challenges for analytical chemists working in tobacco regulatory science to develop and optimize new methods to assess new nicotine parameters, namely enantiomer ratio and source. We conducted a systematic literature review of the available analytical methods to detect the nicotine enantiomer ratio and the source of nicotine using PubMed and Web of Science databases. Methods to detect nicotine enantiomers included polarimetry, nuclear magnetic resonance, and gas and liquid chromatography. We also covered methods developed to detect the source of nicotine either indirectly via determining the nicotine enantiomer ratio or the detection of tobacco-specific impurities or directly using the isotope ratio enrichment analysis by nuclear magnetic resonance (site-specific natural isotope fractionation and site-specific peak intensity ratio) or accelerated mass spectrometry. This review presents an accessible summary of all these analytical methods.