United States: Drug companies and pharmacies have been causing shortages, delays, and red tape for many patients who need insulin over the past year, the reports say.
More about the news
More than 2 million Americans with Type 1 diabetes must take drugs to help control blood sugar. As Type 2 diabetes progresses, many millions more of us take insulin, too.
About three in four people with diabetes, or 38 million in total, have Type 2.
Unreliable insulin supply
But experts warn diabetes patients who rely on insulin for survival that the nation’s supply is unreliable. Since late 2023, multiple brands of insulin have been in shortage several times.
Those shortages caught the eye of patient advocates and members of Congress, who called on the nation’s three dominant insulin makers for answers.
Rising demand for weight loss drugs
Diabetes patients are increasingly moving to drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, part of a new class of weight loss drugs known as glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP 1, which are approved for treating Type 2 diabetes.
Drug makers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars employing factory production of these drugs in order to keep up with the voracious American appetite for them to treat everything from diabetes to weight loss.
And those patients depend on insulin worry that the drug companies’ new focus on the profitable blockbuster drugs is sucking away the time and resources needed for a drug created more than a century ago that keeps them alive. People who need to inject themselves with insulin to survive said the shortages have driven them to make terrible choices.
Three major insulin manufacturers in US
3drug companies dominate the USA insulin market: Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk. Eli Lilly reported last spring its drugs humalog and insulin lispro were in short supply last spring. This year, the manufacturer of NovoLog, Novo Nordisk, also reported periodic shortages.