{"doi":"10.3390/ijerph17041157","title":"Comparison of Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay Methods to Measure Salivary Cotinine Levels in Ill Children","abstract":"Objective: Cotinine is the preferred biomarker to validate levels of tobacco smoke exposure (TSE) in children. Compared to enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay methods (ELISA) for quantifying cotinine in saliva, the use of liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has higher sensitivity and specificity to measure very low levels of TSE. We sought to compare LC-MS/MS and ELISA measures of cotinine in saliva samples from children overall and the associations of these measures with demographics and TSE patterns. Method: Participants were nonsmoking children (N = 218; age mean (SD) = 6.1 (5.1) years) presenting to a pediatric emergency department. Saliva samples were analyzed for cotinine using both LC-MS/MS and ELISA. Limit of quantitation (LOQ) for LC-MS/MS and ELISA was 0.1 ng/mL and 0.15 ng/mL, respectively. Results: Intraclass correlations (ICC) across methods = 0.884 and was consistent in sex and age subgroups. The geometric mean (GeoM) of LC-MS/MS = 4.1 (range: < LOQ to 382 ng/mL; 3% < LOQ) which was lower (p < 0.0001) than the ELISA GeoM = 5.7 (range: < LOQ to 364 ng/mL; 5% < LOQ). Similar associations of cotinine concentrations with age ( β ^ < −0.10, p < 0.0001), demographic characteristics (e.g., income), and number of cigarettes smoked by caregiver ( β ^ > 0.07, p < 0.0001) were found regardless of cotinine detection method; however, cotinine associations with sex and race/ethnicity were only found to be significant in models using LC-MS/MS-derived cotinine. Conclusions: Utilizing LC-MS/MS-based cotinine, associations of cotinine with sex and race/ethnicity of child were revealed that were not detectable using ELISA-based cotinine, demonstrating the benefits of utilizing the more sensitive LC-MS/MS assay for cotinine measurement when detecting low levels of TSE in children.","journal":"International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health","year":2020,"id":86761,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.95,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":441974,"name":"Matthew J. Mazzella","orcid":"0000-0003-3584-1670","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":441975,"name":"John T. Doucette","orcid":"0000-0001-8985-0367","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":379561,"name":"Ashley L. Merianos","orcid":"0000-0002-5640-7227","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":441976,"name":"Lara Stone","orcid":"0000-0002-6978-892X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":442890,"name":"Chase A. Wullenweber","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":298798,"name":"Stefanie A. Busgang","orcid":"0000-0003-1397-2055","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":356990,"name":"Georg E. Matt","orcid":"0000-0001-5604-4609","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":380735,"name":"E. Melinda Mahabee‐Gittens","orcid":"0000-0002-3893-885X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":46,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:59:03.706190Z","pmid":"32059566","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}