Environmental tobacco smoke and urinary cotinine in a group of adolescents

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Abstract
Cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, can be measured in urine in a non‐invasive way. This procedure permits its use in large‐scale epidemiolog‐ical studies. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the relationship between environmental tobacco smoke exposure and urinary cotinine in 148 school children (14 years old). The subjects were randomly chosen from a larger study group of 460 school children. The data on exposure were based on a questionnaire. Cotinine levels for the two extremes of passive exposure (no exposure vs. living with a smoking mother and other smokers) demonstrated a statistically significant difference (P = 0.0069) as did exposure for smokers vs. nonsmokers (P = 0.0001). This validation will allow us to consider the answers to the questionnaire relative to tobacco smoke exposure as an independent variable in the near‐complete analysis of the larger study of the 460 students for all the parameters considered.