A programmable smoke delivery device for PET imaging with cigarettes containing ¹¹C-nicotine

PET imaging with ¹¹C-nicotine-loaded cigarettes is a valuable tool to directly assess fast nicotine kinetics and its neuropharmacological role in tobacco dependence. To eliminate variations among puffs inhaled by subjects, this work aimed to develop a programmable smoke delivery device (SDD) to produce highly reproducible and adjustable puffs of cigarette smoke for PET experiments.

The SDD was built around a programmable syringe pump as a smoking machine to draw a puff of smoke from a ¹¹C-nicotine-loaded cigarette and make it available for a subject to take the smoke into the mouth and then inhale it during PET data acquisition. Brain nicotine time activity curves and total body absorbed ¹¹C-nicotine doses (TAD) were measured in smokers who inhaled a single puff of smoke via the SDD from a ¹¹C-nicotine-loaded cigarette.

Nearly identical brain nicotine kinetics were observed between participants who inhaled a puff of smoke through the SDD and those who inhaled directly from a cigarette.

This new device minimizes puff variations that exist with earlier smoke delivery apparatuses which could introduce confounding factors.

The SDD is effective in delivering ¹¹C-nicotine from the study cigarettes. Despite a 2-s increase in aging of smoke delivered through the SDD versus smoke taken directly from a cigarette, the difference in brain nicotine kinetics after ¹¹C-nicotine delivery with and without use of the SDD is negligible. This refined device may be useful for future research on the deposition and pharmacokinetics of nicotine inhaled with tobacco smoke.