TY - JOUR T1 - Smoking status and second-hand smoke biomarkers in COPD, asthma and healthy controls JF - ERJ Open Research JO - erjor DO - 10.1183/23120541.00192-2019 VL - 6 IS - 2 SP - 00192-2019 AU - Matteo Bradicich AU - Macé M. Schuurmans Y1 - 2020/04/01 UR - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/6/2/00192-2019.abstract N2 - Introduction Tobacco smoke worsens COPD and asthma. For healthy individuals, quantifying active and second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure clarifies the epidemiology of tobacco consumption and the efficacy of nonsmoking measures. Identifying tobacco exposure biomarkers and cut-offs might allow the creation of sensitive and specific tests.Aim We describe the state-of-the-art serum, urinary cotinine and exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) cut-offs for assessing smoking status and SHS exposure in adult patients with COPD or asthma, and healthy controls.Methodology After a keyword research in the PubMed database, we included papers reporting on the cut-offs of the investigated biomarkers in one of the populations of interest. Papers published before 2000, not in English, or reporting only data on nonadult subjects or on pregnant women were excluded from the analysis. 14 papers were included in the final analysis. We summarised diagnostic cut-offs for smoking status or SHS exposure in COPD, asthmatic and healthy control cohorts, reporting sensitivity and specificity when available.Conclusion Serum and urinary cotinine and exhaled CO are easy-to-standardise, affordable and objective tests for assessing smoking status and SHS exposure. Evidence on cut-offs with good sensitivity and specificity values is available mainly for healthy controls. For COPD and asthmatic patients, most of the currently available evidence focuses on exhaled CO, while studies on the use of cotinine with definite sensitivity and specificity values are still missing. Solid evidence on SHS exposure is available only for healthy controls. An integrated approach with a combination of these markers still needs evaluation.Reliable cut-off values for smoking status in COPD and asthmatic adults are only available for exhaled CO https://bit.ly/34lsHhD ER -