Nicotine is the main alkaloid in tobacco, which is the material cause of smoking addiction, and is also a common index to evaluate human intake of tobacco smoke. However, because of the short half-life of nicotine, it can not be used as a marker for detection. Because of its long half-life, cotinine can be used as a marker for smoking and quitting smoking.
The method of competitive inhibition and colloidal gold immunochromatography was used for rapid and qualitative detection of cotinine in human urine. It was suitable for the preliminary screening of tobacco smoke intake.