| Summary: | Nicotine, an oxidizing agent, is certainly one of the most widely used alkaloids in the world.
It is, together with its main metabolite, cotinine, responsible for tobacco-dependence. The use of
tobacco is closely associated with lung disease, morphological leukocyte modification and generation
of oxidant species. The aim of this study was to look for a possible relationship between cotinine,
oxidant species generation and oxidative processes. After studying the action of cotinine in some
chemical oxidation models and on the enzymatic kinetics of peroxidases (myeloperoxidase and
horseradish peroxidase), we concluded that cotinine does not act directly upon H2O2, HOCl, taurine
chloramines, horseradish peroxidase or myeloperoxidase.
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