U.S. drugs in shortage have reached “record highs” and policymakers must address gaps in pharmaceutical supply chains to better prepare for future, unanticipated shocks, according to researchers from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The researchers, who published their findings Friday in JAMA Network Open, surveyed 571 drugs exposed to 731 supply chain issue reports and assessed them against 7,296 comparison medications with no reports from 2017 to 2021, discovering that one in seven reports were linked with drug shortages, which was defined as decreases in sales of greater or equal to 33 percent.

In a JAMA commentary on the research paper, scholars Joshua Sharfstein and Mariana Socal of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health wrote that these production problems are responsible for 70 percent or more of shortages on record.

Read “Drug Shortages Prior to and During the COVID-19 Pandemic” here.

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