Development of a rapid nicotine detection method using novel colloidal gold immunochromatography

For the rapid field detection of nicotine, a novel nicotine hapten was synthesized and successfully coupled with bovine serum albumin to form an antigen. The monoclonal antibodies were obtained by immunization of Balb/c mice. A method based on rapid nicotine colloidal gold immunochromatographic strip was developed by labeling specific antibodies with colloidal gold. The results showed that: 1) The detection limit of the test strip for nicotine was 100 ng/mL. The specificity was high because there was no cross reaction with nicotine analogues such as anabasine and nornicotine. 2) The sample pretreatment procedure was simple and the entire detection process could be completed within 15 minutes. 3) Qualitative analysis of nicotine in 132 different types of samples was performed using this strip and the results were in satisfactory agreement with those obtained by chromatographic analysis. This technology is suitable for rapid field analysis of nicotine in different types of samples.