Determination of fenfluramine enantiomers in pharmaceutical formulations by capillary zone electrophoresis

Summary Capillary zone electrophoresis has been used for the enantiomeric separation of racemic ortho-fenfluramine and meta-fenfluramine employing a phosphate buffer at pH 2.5 added with cyclodextrins. The cyclodextrin type and concentration strongly influenced the chiral resolution. The uncharged β-cyclodextrin polymer gave enantiomeric resolution of both ortho and meta isomers, while γ-cyclodextrin was a good chiral selector for only ortho-fenfluramine; heptakis-2,3,6-tri-O-methyl-β-cyclodextrin permitted base line separation of meta-fenfluramine enantiomers but only partial resolution of racemic ortho-fenfluramine. The optimized electrophoretic method was applied to the quantitative analysis of 1-meta-fenfluramine (minor component in the mixture) and d-meta-fenfluramine in a commercial pharmaceutical formulation. Good reproducibility for migration time and corrected peak areas (R.S.D. <0.8% and <1.2%, respectively) was achieved and the presence of the minor component of the mixture was found to be in accord to previous determinations performed by other analytical methods.