Differentiation of smokers from non smokers by Fourier Transform Infrared Microscopy (ATR-FTIRM) of toe nails

An attempt to differentiate smokers from non smokers using ATR-FTIR was done throughout this study. To analyze these differences, toe nail samples were used. In this study two types of smokers were analyzed with the non smokers. The main concept of this study was to extract nicotine or cotinine from the nail samples. Samples of smokers of age groups 20–70 years were obtained from two different regions, India and Beaumont, TX. Type 1 smokers belonged to India and were reported that they smoke low quality tobacco and type 2 smokers were mainly students of 20–25 years of age and smoked quality cigarettes. It was interesting to observe that smokers of these two types showed different results yet have a close correspondence to the cotinine. Cotinine is a metabolite of nicotine. It was also observed that the spectra of both types of smokers were different from the non smokers. It was also analyzed that the nicotine spectra had little correspondence to both types of the spectra of smokers. Therefore, it can be concluded that nicotine in the body is converted to cotinine and this cotinine could be a helpful tool in the identification of smokers from non smokers.