Vice News by Paul Blest and Sam Eagan 4/10/2023
The shortage announced in October is still ongoing, and it’s making patients, providers, and psychiatrists’ lives much more difficult.
Adderall, also known as mixed amphetamine salts (MAS), is one of the most commonly prescribed medications for ADHD. In October, the Food and Drug Administration announced that there was a shortage of Adderall, because the drug’s largest supplier, Teva Pharmaceuticals, was experiencing manufacturing delays.
At that point, as Motherboard reported prior to the announcement, the shortage had been going on for months; Teva and three other companies put extended-release Adderall on backorder last August, citing a labor shortage. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) first listed a drug shortage for Adderall on its website last July. The FDA’s list of shortages shows that the drug is “currently in shortage,” and a list of nine companies that produce Adderall and MAS shows that just three have a fully available of all dosages they make. Regarding Teva specifically, the FDA says that the company “continues to experience unprecedented increase in demand.”
And though Teva at first said the shortage would resolve by the end of 2022, it hasn’t ended. In a statement to VICE News last week, the FDA said the shortage is now “demand-driven.” There has been a spike in ADHD diagnoses over the past several years; prescriptions for people between the ages of 22 and 44 increased nearly 60 percent between 2018 and the first half of 2022, according to Trilliant Health, a company that analyzes healthcare data.
Dr. Erin Fox, an associate chief pharmacy officer at University of Utah Health, which compiles drug shortage data for ASHP, told VICE News that a manufacturing issue alone could produce a snowball effect that makes it more difficult to obtain medication.
More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3mv99/why-is-there-an-adderall-shortage
