Antihypertensive drugs are given to patients to lower their blood pressure. The compounds, captopril and enalapril, inhibit the enzyme that converts angiotensin II into angiotensin I. Angiotensin II is one of the strongest blood pressure decreasing substances. Figure 1 shows the separation of the two antihypertensive drugs, captopril and enalapril, using gradient analysis on a Zorbax SB-C18 reversed-phase column and UV detection. Chromatographic parameters, such as pH, mobile phase, column type, temperature, etc, can be varied to optimize an analytical method. Figure 2 shows the effect of increasing temperature on the peak shape of captopril and enalapril. Increasing the temperature improves the peak shape. The performance data of the HPLC method shown in Table 1 indicates the reliability of the analysis. The autosampler temperature was set to 4 ºC to avoid decomposition of the samples