Analysis of chiral pharmaceuticals using HPLC with CD detection

Recent American Food and Drug Administration guidelines have effectively determined that mixtures of chiral compounds can no longer be brought to the pharmaceuticals marketplace. These guidelines require a means for chiral detection and compound separation. This article describes separation and detection of chiral pharmaceuticals using HPLC with circular dichroism detection. Two over-the-counter (OTC) medications, Prilosec and naproxen sodium, along with the prescription drugs Naproxen, Nexium, and Coumadin were analyzed using HPLC with CD, UV, and optical rotation (OR) detection. In all cases the CD and UV detectors displayed a much greater sensitivity than the OR detector. Although in many cases the UV detector did have a slightly better sensitivity than the CD detector, the CD detector had the advantage of only responding to the chiral compounds, eliminating the possibility of interference with the peaks of interest.