Bergen AW, McMahan CS, McGee S, et al. - Based on nicotine metabolites, genome-wide data, and statistical learning approaches, researchers performed development of novel robust predictive models for urinary nicotine biomarkers in multiple ethnic groups.

• Following were the genomic regions with the most selected and included variants for measured biomarkers: chr19q13.2 [urinary nicotine metabolite ratio (uNMR), without and with cigarettes per day (CPD)] and chr15q25.1 and chr10q25.3 [total nicotine equivalents (TNE), without and with CPD].

• Associations were observed between measured and predicted biomarker values for the uNMR and TNE without (with CPD).

• Penalized regression models of TNE (with CPD) with fewer variants at chr15q25.1 selected and included, yielded inconsistent results.

• Predicted uNMR (without CPD) was significantly linked with CPD and predicted TNE (without CPD) with CPD, time-to-first-cigarette, and Fagerström total score.