Supply chain issues connected to a dearth of drugs for cancer and other chronic illnesses surged at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a federally funded study found.
Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, nine researchers analyzed medicine that U.S. pharmacies purchased from wholesalers and manufacturers from 2017 to 2021.
Publishing their findings Friday in JAMA Network Open, they matched 571 medications exposed to 731 supply chain complaints with 7,296 drugs that had no issues.
The study linked 1 in 7 reported supply chain issues to drug shortages, defined as a decrease in sales of 33% or more within six months. The rate of deficiency increased to more than 1 in 3 reports from February to April 2020 during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, then returned to pre-pandemic levels after May.
“It is important to know that while the pandemic may have exacerbated drug shortages, the problem of shortages is not new,” Katie J. Suda, a co-author of the study and pharmacist teaching at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine, told The Washington Times. “Drug shortages have occurred for decades.”
She said generic and injected drugs were likeliest to experience supply issues, while oral medicine was among the most likely to have shortages. The study didn’t name specific drugs.
The researchers noted that their findings add to the record number of medical supply chain complaints during the pandemic lockdown, which started in March 2020.
They wrote that “ongoing policy work” is needed to protect the nation’s drug supply from future disruptions, but didn’t make specific recommendations.
In invited commentary published with the study, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health professors Mariana Socal and Joshua Sharfstein said the study confirmed that the pandemic worsened a decadeslong shortage of medicine for cancer and other chronic illnesses. They said production problems typically account for 70% or more of shortages.
“Demand surged unevenly across the country as waves of disease hit metropolitan and rural areas, manufacturing constraints affected both domestic and foreign suppliers, and lockdowns and export bans challenged the distribution of pharmaceutical supplies,” Drs. Socal and Sharfstein wrote. “Together, these various factors placed an enormous strain on the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain, revealing the key vulnerabilities of a system chronically prone to failures.”
In an email to The Times, Ms. Socal pointed to an earlier study she co-authored with Mr. Sharfstein that found foreign travel bans and lockdowns caused U.S. shortages of antimicrobials, antivirals and a range of drugs used in intensive care and general hospital management.
“The main factors that contributed to the pandemic-related shortages were the U.S. reliance on a global supply chain for pharmaceuticals, with China, India and Europe as the main suppliers,” she said. “A solution would be to empower a new office in the Food and Drug Administration to identify and safeguard the supply of essential drugs at special risk of shortage in times of crisis.”
A spokesperson for Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co., the nation’s largest pharmaceutical company, declined to comment on the study.
“Lilly medicines were not impacted as a result of the pandemic,” the spokesperson said. “This is a result of strategic checks and balances put in place to ensure continuous supply of medicines to patients.”
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the study points to problems with the U.S. drug chain.
“Enhancing resiliency of drug supply chains during pandemics and even ordinary times is an important task that remains to be solved,” he said.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.