ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the supercritical fluid chromatography analysis of compounds of pharmaceutical interest. It explores to pharmaceutical compounds in general, whereas chiral separations of drugs will be extensively discussed. The antibiotics were baseline resolved; but detection was more problematical because the absorbance properties were very different due to their contrasting structures. The difficulty to analyse prostaglandins is well known and due to the fact that solutes are thermally labile, contain rather similar isomeric structures leading however to very different biological activities. Vitamin A could not be easily chromatographed in Gas chromatography due to the high temperature that are required regarding the thermal instability of the analyte. Drugs gathered under the term "drugs of abuse" are quite diverse in chemical structure but are grouped together because of the social and economical impact of their analysis. The separation of barbiturates has been widely studied for therapeutical and toxicological applications because of their widespread application for the treatment of epilepsy.
