Facilitated Diffusion of Acetonitrile Revealed by Quantitative Breath Analysis Using Extractive Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry

• DOI: 10.1038/srep01205
• Publication Date: 2013-02-05T10:13:53Z
• Authors: Ming Li; Jianhua Ding; Haiwei Gu; Yan Zhang; Susu Pan; Ning Xu; Huanwen Chen; Hongmei Li
• Keywords: Extractive electrospray ionization

By using silver cations (Ag⁺) as the ionic reagent in reactive extractive electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (EESI-MS), concentrations of acetonitrile exhaled breath samples from volunteers including active smokers, passive and non-smokers were quantitatively measured vivo, without any sample pretreatment. A limit detection (LOD) relative standard deviation (RSD) 0.16 ng/L 3.5% (n = 8), respectively, for signals MS/MS experiments. Interestingly, human continuously increased 1-4 hours after smoker finished smoking then slowly decreased to background level 7 days. The experimental data a large number (> 165) indicated that inhaled is excreted most likely by facilitated diffusion, instead simple diffusion reported previously other volatile compounds.