Chiral and nonchiral determination of ketoprofen in pharmaceuticals by capillary zone electrophoresis

The new method for the enantiomeric resolution of various 2-arylpropionic acids by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) using heptakis-tri-O-methyl-beta-cyclodextrin as chiral selector was applied to the determination of ketoprofen in different commercially-available pharmaceutical preparations. The analyte was determined under chiral and nonchiral conditions (viz. in the presence and absence of 50 mM heptakis-tri-O-methyl-beta-cyclodextrin in the background electrolyte), with significantly similar results and relative standard deviations from 1.2 to 6.5% in both cases. The limits of detection and determination for the inactive enantiomer, R-(-)-ketoprofen, were calculated to be 7.0.10(-7) and 1.6.10(-6) M, respectively. The proposed method was successfully used to determine enantiomeric purity in the drugs studied, with results comparable to those provided by the chiral HPLC method. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.