Development of practical and accurate HPLC methods for enantioselective analysis of fluoxetine and citalopram

Simple and robust HPLC methods for direct separation ofenantiomers of popular antidepressive drugs: fluoxetine and citalopram have been developed. Enantioseparation has been performed on several commercial chiral HPLC columns. Composition of the mobile phase has been optimised. For the separation of fluoxetine and citalopram enantiomers amylose Chiralpak AD column and cellulose Chiralcel OD-H column were the most convenient, respectively. The limits of quantitation for fluoxetine and citalopram were found to be 0.02 mg mL-' and 0.003 mg mL-', respectively. The proposed methods have been validated under the applied conditions. They have been found to be selective and precise with linear response of detector for both pairs of enantiomers.