An ongoing shortage of liquid albuterol, a medicine commonly used for breathing problems like asthma, is expected to get worse as there is only one domestic supplier left.
Akorn, an Illinois-based specialty drug company, filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 23 after years of trying to work through regulatory and financial troubles. It also closed down all its factories in the United States, including the Illinois plant that produces liquid albuterol used in nebulizers, a machine that turns liquid medicine into a fine mist that reaches the lungs faster.
The closure made Nephron Pharmaceuticals, a drug maker in South Carolina, the last remaining U.S.-based supplier of albuterol inhalation solution. As on March 1, Nephron is still having a backorder of the drug “due to a manufacturing issue,” according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists’ drug shortage website….