US reach­es new record of 320+ drugs in ac­tive short­age, group says

The num­ber of drugs in ac­tive short­age has reached an all-time high in the US, with 48 new med­i­cines added to the list so far this year, ac­cord­ing to a new re­port by the Amer­i­can So­ci­ety of Health-Sys­tem Phar­ma­cists (ASHP).

The 323 drugs in short­age in the first quar­ter of this year is the high­est it’s been since ASHP start­ed col­lect­ing da­ta, ac­cord­ing to the group. The num­ber of un­re­solved short­ages has wa­vered around 300 in the past six quar­ters. ASHP rep­re­sents 60,000 phar­ma­cists in the US and has been track­ing drug short­ages since 2001.

The coun­try has been grap­pling with drug short­ages for years. Chemother­a­pies have been in short sup­ply, along with AD­HD med­ica­tions and ster­ile in­jecta­bles. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden re­cent­ly pro­posed that hos­pi­tals pay more for drugs from man­u­fac­tur­ers that can demon­strate sup­ply chain re­silience, much to the dis­may of health­care groups.

There have been calls to in­crease the fre­quen­cy of for­eign in­spec­tions. How­ev­er, FDA Com­mis­sion­er Rob Califf not­ed this could wors­en sup­ply is­sues if more in­spec­tions lead to more man­u­fac­tur­ing lines that are paused.

In Feb­ru­ary, the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion band­ed with the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices to in­ves­ti­gate how drug whole­salers and group pur­chas­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions could be con­tribut­ing to drug short­ages. House De­moc­rats queried com­pa­nies like Pfiz­er, San­doz and Te­va on how they plan to ad­dress med­i­cine short­ages.

Most med­i­cines in ac­tive short­age at the end of March were cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem drugs, with 66 on the list, fol­lowed by an­timi­cro­bials at 43. Round­ing out the top five are hor­mon­al agents (34), chemother­a­py (32) and flu­ids and elec­trolytes (25).

Of the new drugs in short­age in 2024, 46% are in­jecta­bles. Ear­li­er this month, the FDA said there are four dos­es of Eli Lil­ly’s block­buster drug Moun­jaro in short sup­ply.

Al­though the re­port did not say how many re­spon­dents were sur­veyed, a vast ma­jor­i­ty (60%) of man­u­fac­tur­ers told the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah Drug In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice that they do not know or re­fused to pro­vide a po­ten­tial rea­son for the short­ages.

Some re­spon­dents, how­ev­er, said the short­ages were due to the ten­sion be­tween sup­ply and de­mand (14%), while oth­ers point­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing and busi­ness de­ci­sions, at 12% each. A small num­ber of re­spon­dents (2%) at­trib­uted short­ages to raw ma­te­ri­als.