Agreement between nicotine metabolites in blood and self-reported smoking status: The Netherlands Epidemiology of Obesity study

Self-report and nicotine detection are methods to measure smoking exposure and can both lead to misclassification. It is important to highlight discrepancies between these two methods in the context of epidemiological research.The aim of this cross-sectional study is to assess the agreements between self-reported smoking status and nicotine metabolite detection.Data of 599 participants from the Netherlands Epidemiology of Obesity study were used to compare serum metabolite levels of five nicotine metabolites (cotinine, hydroxy-cotinine, cotinineIn 94% of the self-reported current smokers, at least one metabolite was present, versus in 19% of the former smokers and in 10% of the never smokers. In none of the never smokers, cotinine-The agreement between self-reported smoking status and metabolite information was high. This indicates that self-reported smoking status is generally reliable.