Electrodriven methods for the enantioseparation of second-generation antidepressant drugs: an update

Second-generation antidepressant drugs are increasingly prescribed world-wide by psychiatrists and primary care physicians. Generally speaking, they seem to be safer than traditional tricyclic antidepressant drugs, especially in overdose. However, most of them possess stereogenic centers, thus they can exist as enantiomeric couples. Since enantiomers can have even dramatically different pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties, the study of antidepressant chirality is of great importance. In fact, the application of enantioselective analytical techniques can be useful both for the quality control of enantiomerically pure formulations and for the pharmacovigilance and therapeutic monitoring of patients undergoing treatment with these drugs. The high efficiency and inexpensiveness of electrodriven methods makes them a very attractive alternative to the usual chromatographic methods. This review is an update (2004-2007) of a previously published paper on recent electrodriven methods for the enantioseparation of second-generation antidepressants. In particular, the focus has been put on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as citalopram and sertraline, noradrenergic and specific serotonergic antidepressants, such as mirtazapine and tetracyclic antidepressants such as mianserin, as well as on multianalyte methods.