Back-to-School Season Overshadowed By Ongoing Stimulant Med Shortages
As millions of Americans, both children and adult, prepare to return to school next week, an ongoing challenge has once again reared its head: a shortage of stimulant drugs used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
For the past 2 years, pharmacies have struggled to keep both brand-name and generic ADHD drugs stocked, including Adderall, Vyvanse, Concerta, and Ritalin.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first announced a shortage of amphetamine/dextroamphetamine on October 12, 2022, the result of a “perfect storm” caused by a sharp rise in demand for the drugs, manufacturing delays, and an imperfect quota system run by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for the production of scheduled substances for legal sale.
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Since then, the FDA, DEA, and drug manufacturers have detailed their attempts to mitigate the shortage, including approvals of additional generic formulations of stimulant medications and efforts to increase production allotments. However, much finger-pointing between these 3 entities has left health care professionals and consumers alike confused, frustrated, and in need of immediate solutions that ensure continuity of care.
While some health care professionals report that the shortage is easing up, others report that many patients struggle to get their prescriptions filled within a reasonable window of time.
Lenard Adler, MD, director of the adult ADHD program at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York estimates that he has to rewrite “30% to 40%” of ADHD medication prescriptions due to pharmacies not having drugs in stock.
“I have several patients who have been off their meds for two to three months,” Dr Adler told NBC News. “When they get off their medications, their symptoms come back and then they forget to make a follow-up appointment, and I have no way of knowing this is happening.”
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The stimulant shortage is just one dimension of a much larger drug supply shortage in the United States. With 323 medicines in short supply, Axios reported in April 2024 that US drug shortages are at the highest level ever seen since data tracking started in 2001.
The United States is also not the only country facing drug shortages. Earlier this month in the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) issued a warning for expected shortages in 9 key medications for mental health treatment, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Some NHS doctors have even been instructed to refrain from prescribing methylphenidate.
"People are trying to look for alternatives where they can but [the stimulant] category, in general, is just seeing such a shortfall there's not really one shift that's solving the problem," Xevant's Pharmacy Benefit Management vice president, Shane Garduno, told Axios.
"There's no flexibility in the system to meet that demand," she said. "And so then what happens is people have to go without."
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