Measurement of optical purity for commercially avialable naproxen sold in 2013

Commercial (S)-naproxen was racemized under strong basic condition. After checking the peak position of (R)- and (S)-naproxen by analysis the recemized naproxen, optical purity of 19 commercialized naproxens sold in 2013 in Korea were examined by chiral HPLC. The Chiralcel OD-H column, ChiralHyun-LE(S)-1 column and LUX-Cellulose-1 column were used as chiral stationary phases and the mixed eluent of hexane:isopropanol:acetic acid as 100:1:0.1 was used as a mobile phase with a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. Each data was obtained from an average value of at least three different experiments for each sample and the relative standard deviation of them appeared very small. The average optical purity values obtained from three different chiral columns were very similar and the total average optical purity value (99.32%) of nineteen commercialized naproxens used in this study were larger than those of three years ago (98.17%).