Spanish 
Chinese 
Russian 
German 
French 
Japanese 
Portuguese 
Hindi Research Article
Nicotine Absorption from Smokeless Tobacco Modified to Adjust pH
Wallace B Pickworth1*, Zachary R Rosenberry1, Wyatt Gold2 and Bartosz Koszowski11 Battelle Memorial Institute, Human Exposure Assessment Laboratory (HEAL), Baltimore, MD, USA
2 Notre Dame of Maryland University, School of Pharmacy, Baltimore, MD, USA
- Corresponding Author:
- Wallace Pickworth
Battelle Health and Analytics
6115 Falls Road, Suite 200
Baltimore, MD 21209, USA
Tel: 410-372-2706
E-mail: pickworthw@battelle.org
Received date: March 26, 2014; Accepted date: May 27, 2014; Published date: May 31, 2014
Citation: Pickworth WB, Rosenberry ZR, Gold W, Koszowski B (2014) Nicotine Absorption from Smokeless Tobacco Modified to Adjust pH. J Addict Res Ther 5:184. doi:10.4172/2155-6105.1000184
Copyright: © 2014 Pickworth WB, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction: Nicotine delivery from smokeless tobacco (ST) products leads to addiction and the use of ST causes pathology that is associated with increased initiation of cigarette smoking. The rapid delivery of nicotine from ST seems to be associated with the pH of the aqueous suspension of the products - high pH is associated with high nicotine absorption. However, early studies compared nicotine absorption from different commercial products that not only differed in pH but in flavoring, nicotine content, and in format-pouches and loose tobacco.
Methods: The present study compared nicotine absorption from a single unflavored referent ST product (pH 7.7) that was flavored with a low level of wintergreen (2 mg/g) and the pH was amended to either high (8.3) or low (5.4) pH with sodium carbonate or citric acid, respectively.
Results: In a within-subject clinical study, the higher pH products delivered more nicotine. No significant differences were seen between perceived product strengths and product experience in all conditions. Heart rate increased by 4 to 6 beats per minute after the high pH flavored and the un-amended product but did not change after the low pH flavored product.
Conclusions: These results indicate that pH is a primary determinant of buccal nicotine absorption. The role of flavoring and other components of ST products in nicotine absorption remain to be determined.
