Nicotine test gives the levels of nicotine addiction or abuse in a person. The drug Nicotine is one of the regularly abused and commercially available drugs in the society. Apart from tobacco smoking, nicotine is also available in forms of nicotine gum, transdermal patches, and nasal sprays. Nicotine abuse results in increased risk of lung cancer, heart diseases, COPD, strokes, asthma, blood clot formation, etc. Nicotine test will help a person in checking his nicotine abuse effectively and thus decrease its adverse affects.

Specimen Collection

Nicotine test identifies its metabolite - cotinine. Though cotinine can be measured in saliva and hair, detecting cotinine through analytical urine test is mostly prevalent and easy. It is also effective in terms of providing results as cotinine can be detected for up to 3 days after consumption at a cut-off level of 200 ng/ml.

Nicotine Drug Test Method

The One Stop Cotinine test device is an effective way of qualitative cotinine detection in human urine. It is important to make sure that the test device is at room temperature, before testing. The device must be placed on a clean and level surface. The specimen should be taken into the provided dropper. Holding the drop vertically, 3 full drops must be transferred into the S (specimen) part of the test kit. There should be no trapping of air bubbles in the S part of the kit.

Interpretation of the Results

The interpretation of the results must be read exactly after five minutes after providing sample to the testing kit. There are two ends in the testing kit labeled C (control line region) and T (test line region), where colored lines will appear. When the colored lines appear at both the regions, it indicates that the cotinine concentration is below cut-off level i.e., negative. Even a faint shade of line in T region can be considered negative. When there is no colored line in T region, but it is visible in C region of the test kit, it can be considered as positive for cotinine abuse. When a line does not appear in the C region, then the test is invalid. Invalid results are likely to show up in cases of insufficient specimen volume or Incorrect testing procedure.

Nicotine tests are helpful in many cases like smoking cessation programs, during application of life or health insurance, employee drug testing programs, for self-testing, and during medical complications.