A review with 103 references. Fluoxetine is the parent drug of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant class, and is still one of the most highly used drugs of this class world-wide. Fluoxetine now has largely (albeit not completely) substituted older and less safe drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants. Different cytochrome P450 isoforms are involved in the metabolism of fluoxetine, however, the main active metabolite, norfluoxetine, is produced by the CYP2D6 action in the human liver. In this paper, the main metabolic characteristics of fluoxetine will be reviewed, with particular attention paid to the role of cytochrome isozymes. The pharmacological interactions of the drug will be overviewed, especially those concerning other drugs used in psychiatric clinics, such as antipsychotics and antidepressants and the relationships between pharmacological interactions and cytochrome activity will be discussed. Recently, much attention has been drawn to the therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of fluoxetine, and in particular to the analysis of fluoxetine enantiomers for which enantiomeric separations and enantioselective metabolism will also briefly be mentioned.

Assay procedures based on derivative ultraviolet spectrophotometry and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) have been developed for the specific determination of amiodarone hydrochloride in pharmaceutical dosage forms. The use of first- and second-order derivative spectrophotometry was found to have suppressed the background absorption from the excipients with comparable accuracy and precision to the reversed-phased HPLC reference method. A conventional UV absorption method (lambda = 242 nm) is subject to possible interference by formulation excipients.

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Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2003) 73, P84–P84; doi:

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