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Watson CH, Yan J, Stanfill S, Valentin-Blasini L, Bravo Cardenas R, Blount BC. A Low-Cost, High-Throughput Digital Image Analysis of Stain Patterns on Smoked Cigarette Filter Butts to Estimate Mainstream Smoke Exposure. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021; 18:10546. [PMID: 34639846 PMCID: PMC8508382 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph181910546] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2021] [Revised: 10/01/2021] [Accepted: 10/04/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Standard machine smoking protocols provide useful information for examining the impact of design parameters, such as filter ventilation, on mainstream smoke delivery. Unfortunately, their results do not accurately reflect human smoke exposure. Clinical research and topography devices in human studies yield insights into how products are used, but a clinical setting or smoking a cigarette attached to such a device may alter smoking behavior. To better understand smokers' use of filtered cigarette products in a more natural environment, we developed a low-cost, high-throughput approach to estimate mainstream cigarette smoke exposure on a per-cigarette basis. This approach uses an inexpensive flatbed scanner to scan smoked cigarette filter butts and custom software to analyze tar-staining patterns. Total luminosity, or optical staining density, of the scanned images provides quantitative information proportional to mainstream smoke-constituent deliveries on a cigarette-by-cigarette basis. Duplicate sample analysis using this new approach and our laboratory's gold-standard liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) solanesol method yielded comparable results (+7% bias) from the analysis of 20 commercial cigarettes brands (menthol and nonmentholated). The brands varied in design parameters such as length, filter ventilation, and diameter. Plots correlating the luminosity to mainstream smoked-nicotine deliveries on a per-cigarette basis for these cigarette brands were linear (average R2 > 0.91 for nicotine and R2 > 0.83 for the tobacco-specific nitrosamine NNK), on a per-brand basis, with linearity ranging from 0.15 to 3.00 mg nicotine/cigarette. Analysis of spent cigarette filters allows exposures to be characterized on a per-cigarette basis or a "daily dose" via summing across results from all filter butts collected over a 24 h period. This scanner method has a 100-fold lower initial capital cost for equipment than the LC/MS/MS solanesol method and provides high-throughput results (~200 samples per day). Thus, this new method is useful for characterizing exposure related to filtered tobacco-product use.
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Affiliation(s)
- Clifford H. Watson
- U.S. Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Highway, NE MS F-55, Atlanta, GA 30341, USA; (J.Y.); (S.S.); (L.V.-B.); (R.B.C.); (B.C.B.)
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Stanfill S, Tran H, Tyx R, Fernandez C, Zhu W, Marynak K, King B, Valentín-Blasini L, Blount BC, Watson C. Characterization of Total and Unprotonated (Free) Nicotine Content of Nicotine Pouch Products. Nicotine Tob Res 2021; 23:1590-1596. [PMID: 34233354 DOI: 10.1093/ntr/ntab030] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2020] [Accepted: 03/02/2021] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Nicotine pouch products, oral smokeless products that contain nicotine but no tobacco leaf material, have recently entered the US marketplace. Available data indicate sales of these products in the United States have increased since 2018; however, the extent of use among US youth and adults is uncertain. METHODS To assay the chemistry of these emerging tobacco products, we analyzed 37 nicotine pouch brands from six total manufacturers. Almost all of the products had flavor descriptors (36 of 37), such as mint, licorice, coffee, cinnamon, and fruit. The amount of free nicotine, the form most easily absorbed, was calculated for each product using total nicotine, product pH, the appropriate pKa, and the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation. RESULTS Nicotine pouch products varied in pouch content mass, moisture content (1.12%‒47.2%), alkalinity (pH 6.86‒10.1), and % free nicotine (7.7%‒99.2%). Total nicotine content ranged from 1.29 to 6.11 mg/pouch, whereas free nicotine ranged from 0.166 to 6.07 mg/pouch. These findings indicate that nicotine and pH levels found in some of these nicotine pouches are similar to conventional tobacco products, such as moist snuff and snus, and that most of these pouch products are flavored. CONCLUSIONS Although these products likely lack many tobacco-related chemicals, each product analyzed contained nicotine, which is both addictive and can harm human health. Given that nicotine pouches may appeal to a spectrum of users, from novice to experienced users, it is important to include these emerging tobacco products in tobacco control research, policy, and practice. IMPLICATIONS These "tobacco-free" nicotine pouches have similar pH and nicotine content to conventional tobacco products, such as moist snuff and snus. Although they lack many tobacco-related chemicals, most are highly flavored which could increase experimentation from new users. Given that nicotine pouches may appeal to a spectrum of users, from novice to experienced users, in terms of their flavors and nicotine content, it is important to examine and include these emerging tobacco products as they relate to tobacco control research, policy, and practice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephen Stanfill
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Hang Tran
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Robert Tyx
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Carolina Fernandez
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Wanzhe Zhu
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Kristy Marynak
- Office on Smoking and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Brian King
- Office on Smoking and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Liza Valentín-Blasini
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Benjamin C Blount
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Clifford Watson
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
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Truman P, Stanfill S, Heydari A, Silver E, Fowles J. Monoamine oxidase inhibitory activity of flavoured e-cigarette liquids. Neurotoxicology 2019; 75:123-128. [PMID: 31536738 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuro.2019.09.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/25/2019] [Revised: 09/09/2019] [Accepted: 09/13/2019] [Indexed: 01/24/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS Monoamine oxidase inhibitors have been hypothesised to be important in tobacco dependence, reinforcing the brain's response to nicotine by delaying the degradation of neurotransmitters by monoamine oxidases. The development of electronic cigarettes has provided an alternative nicotine delivery system, which is widely viewed as less toxic than tobacco smoke. However, significant data gaps remain. This paper reports the results of measurements of monoamine oxidase inhibitory activity in a small sample of commercially available, flavoured e-liquids. METHODS Twelve e-liquids were tested for monoamine oxidase inhibitory activity, using the kynuramine assay and monoamine oxidase enzymes (human, recombinant). Control samples of carrier liquids, propylene glycol and glycerol, and nicotine were also tested. RESULTS Four e-liquids contained high levels of inhibitory activity, four more were moderately inhibitory. The remaining four e-liquids were mildly inhibitory, while the carrier liquids, and nicotine were inactive at relevant concentrations. The active compounds in the e-liquids were subsequently identified as vanillin and ethyl vanillin. Under some conditions of use, the sampled e-liquids with the highest concentrations of monoamine oxidase inhibitory activity have the potential to expose consumers to physiologically significant levels of MAO inhibitory activity. CONCLUSIONS While only a small sample of e-liquids was tested, the findings suggest that some flavours have pharmacological actions, with potential to enhance the response to nicotine or to other drugs. The public health implications of these preliminary findings on addiction and smoking cessation warrant exploration and further research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Penelope Truman
- School of Health Sciences, Massey University Wellington, New Zealand.
| | - Stephen Stanfill
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Ali Heydari
- School of Health Sciences, Massey University Wellington, New Zealand
| | | | - Jefferson Fowles
- Environmental Health Investigations Branch, California Department of Public Health, Richmond, CA, USA
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Smyth EM, Kulkarni P, Claye E, Stanfill S, Tyx R, Maddox C, Mongodin EF, Sapkota AR. Smokeless tobacco products harbor diverse bacterial microbiota that differ across products and brands. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 2017; 101:5391-5403. [PMID: 28432442 DOI: 10.1007/s00253-017-8282-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/09/2016] [Revised: 03/10/2017] [Accepted: 03/31/2017] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Smokeless tobacco products contain numerous chemical compounds, including known human carcinogens. Other smokeless tobacco constituents, including bacteria, may also contribute to adverse health effects among smokeless tobacco users. However, there is a lack of data regarding the microbial constituents of smokeless tobacco. Our goal was to characterize the bacterial microbiota of different smokeless tobacco products and evaluate differences across product types and brands. DNA was extracted from 15 brands of smokeless tobacco products (including dry snuff, moist snuff, snus, and Swedish snus) and 6 handmade products (e.g., toombak) using an enzymatic and mechanical lysis approach. Bacterial community profiling was performed using PCR amplification of the V1-V2 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene, followed by 454 pyrosequencing of the resulting amplicons and sequence analysis using the QIIME package. Total viable counts were also determined to estimate the number of viable bacteria present in each product. Average total viable counts ranged from 0 to 9.35 × 107 CFU g-1. Analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed high bacterial diversity across the majority of products tested: dry snuff products where characterized by the highest diversity indices compared to other products. The most dominant bacterial phyla across all products were Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. Significant differences in both bacterial community composition and in silico predicted gene content were observed between smokeless tobacco product types and between brands of specific smokeless tobacco products. These data are useful in order to comprehensively address potential health risks associated with the use of smokeless tobacco products.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eoghan M Smyth
- Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 801 West Baltimore St., Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA
- Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, 4200 Valley Drive, Bldg no. 255, Room 2234P, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
| | - Prachi Kulkarni
- Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, 4200 Valley Drive, Bldg no. 255, Room 2234P, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
| | - Emma Claye
- Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, 4200 Valley Drive, Bldg no. 255, Room 2234P, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
| | - Stephen Stanfill
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA
| | - Robert Tyx
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA
| | - Cynthia Maddox
- Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 801 West Baltimore St., Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA
| | - Emmanuel F Mongodin
- Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 801 West Baltimore St., Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA
| | - Amy R Sapkota
- Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, 4200 Valley Drive, Bldg no. 255, Room 2234P, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
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Satten GA, Tyx RE, Rivera AJ, Stanfill S. Restoring the Duality between Principal Components of a Distance Matrix and Linear Combinations of Predictors, with Application to Studies of the Microbiome. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0168131. [PMID: 28085878 PMCID: PMC5234780 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168131] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2016] [Accepted: 11/27/2016] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Appreciation of the importance of the microbiome is increasing, as sequencing technology has made it possible to ascertain the microbial content of a variety of samples. Studies that sequence the 16S rRNA gene, ubiquitous in and nearly exclusive to bacteria, have proliferated in the medical literature. After sequences are binned into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) or species, data from these studies are summarized in a data matrix with the observed counts from each OTU for each sample. Analysis often reduces these data further to a matrix of pairwise distances or dissimilarities; plotting the first two or three principal components (PCs) of this distance matrix often reveals meaningful groupings in the data. However, once the distance matrix is calculated, it is no longer clear which OTUs or species are important to the observed clustering; further, the PCs are hard to interpret and cannot be calculated for subsequent observations. We show how to construct approximate decompositions of the data matrix that pair PCs with linear combinations of OTU or species frequencies, and show how these decompositions can be used to construct biplots, select important OTUs and partition the variability in the data matrix into contributions corresponding to PCs of an arbitrary distance or dissimilarity matrix. To illustrate our approach, we conduct an analysis of the bacteria found in 45 smokeless tobacco samples.
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Affiliation(s)
- Glen A. Satten
- Division of Reproductive Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
- * E-mail:
| | - Robert E. Tyx
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
| | - Angel J. Rivera
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
| | - Stephen Stanfill
- Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
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Richter P, Hodge K, Stanfill S, Zhang L, Watson C. Surveillance of moist snuff: total nicotine, moisture, pH, un-ionized nicotine, and tobacco-specific nitrosamines. Nicotine Tob Res 2009; 10:1645-52. [PMID: 18988077 DOI: 10.1080/14622200802412937] [Citation(s) in RCA: 70] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
In 2005, approximately 2.3% of U.S. adults used smokeless tobacco. Moist snuff leads all types of smokeless tobacco in revenues and marketing expenditures. The U.S. Surgeon General has concluded that smokeless tobacco use can lead to nicotine addiction. The National Toxicology Program of the National Institutes of Health has classified smokeless tobacco as a human carcinogen. Tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) are potent carcinogens in smokeless tobacco products, and the pH of the product influences the content of un-ionized nicotine which is the form of nicotine most rapidly absorbed in the mouth. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed 40 top-selling brands of moist snuff to measure nicotine, moisture, pH, un-ionized nicotine, and TSNAs, including 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol (NNAL). The study findings indicate that moist snuff brands varied widely in content of rapidly absorbed, addictive un-ionized nicotine (500-fold range) and of carcinogenic TSNAs (18-fold range). Product characteristics such as packaging and moisture content appeared to be correlated with concentrations of un-ionized nicotine, and flavor characteristics of low-priced brands may correlate with TSNA concentrations. These findings warrant further study in light of (a) the marketing of smokeless tobacco for use in places where smoking is prohibited, (b) the promotion of smokeless tobacco as a harm-reduction product, and (c) the ever-expanding number of highly flavored smokeless varieties brought to the market.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patricia Richter
- Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA.
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