Af­ter Ako­rn's site clo­sures in the US, al­buterol re­mains in short­age

The be­gin­ning of March saw man­u­fac­tur­er Ako­rn Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals file for Chap­ter 7 bank­rupt­cy pro­tec­tion, which led to the clo­sure of all its US man­u­fac­tur­ing plants and hun­dreds of lay­offs. But this al­so had a cas­cad­ing ef­fect lead­ing to a short­age of al­buterol, specif­i­cal­ly the 0.5% ver­sion, which is used to treat breath­ing is­sues.

The clo­sures came at a time when the drug was al­ready in short sup­ply, with the FDA re­port­ing that an­oth­er man­u­fac­tur­er, Nephron, was in short­age too. The FDA’s drug short­age site states that the drug is still in short­age with no new sup­ply com­ing from Akron, and Nephron with drug “on al­lo­ca­tion.”

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