Determination of fluoxetine enantiomers in pharmaceutical formulations by electrokinetic chromatography–counter current technique

In this work, an electrokinetic chromatography–counter current procedure for the separation of fluoxetine enantiomers using highly sulfated β‐cyclodextrin was optimized and applied to the determination of the enantiomers in three pharmaceutical formulations according to the matrix features. Quality criteria were applied to facilitate its transferability to testing laboratories. Fluoxetine was used therapeutically as the racemate, although a stereospecificity associated with its interactions with the neuronal serotonin‐uptake carrier was demonstrated. In this context, the development of enantioselective methods for the chiral analysis of pharmaceuticals allowing stereoisomer ratio estimations has increasing interest in pharmaceutical industry. The proposed method allows the quantification of both enantiomers in less than 2 min with high resolution (R_s = 2.4). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.