Reported at the beginning of the year, the shortage of Quétiapine, an atypical antipsychotic indicated in the treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and certain depressions, is still relevant. The National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) renews its recommendations to deal with supply tensions.
Until mid-September 2025
Following a delay in packaging the finished product, the Viatris laboratory – which so far significantly compensated for the insufficient supply of pharmmathen laboratories – is not able to carry out supplies of medicines based on Quétiapine 300 mg LP and 400 mg LP according to the calendar it had initially planned and announced, indicates the ANSM today. Although these problems are under resolution, the discrepancy “will lead to a deterioration in the availability of these treatments until mid-September 2025”.
Quétiapine 50 mg LP Viatris is not affected by this delay in packaging, specifies the ANSM which asks, however, of doctors and pharmacists of “not postponing prescriptions and dispensations on Quétiapine LP 50 mg for patients not using this dosage usually”. This is to guarantee its availability for the usual needs.
The ANSM recalls that the Quétiapine masterful preparation system is always operational And allows pharmacists, on the basis of ANSM’s recommendations (detail here), to replace Quetiapine -based drugs in prolonged release with immediate release capsules of 50 mg, 100 mg and/or 150 mg.
In addition, stability studies carried out by the ANSM have led to the conservation time of the capsules prepared from 6 to 12 weeks.
Search for alternative solutions
In parallel, the ANSM says it continues to seek “alternative supply solutions with all laboratories marketing Quétiapine in France and Europe”. The agency has thus asked “the laboratories which can now release all of their stocks, in order to limit tensions, in the city and in the hospital, to the replenishment by the Viatris laboratory”.
At the start of the year, the Pr Antoine Pelissolohead of the Créteil CHU Psychiatry Service (94), had reacted on the site to this stock shortage for a psychiatric drug: “Any disturbance in its availability can have significant repercussions on the health of patients” is alarmed, estimating at 20,000 the number of patients treated by this drug in France. The tension of this antipsychotic worries all the more since it is not the only one in the field of psychiatry.
Since the beginning of January 2025, 14 psychotropic drugs have been in supply tension or in stock breaks. Last May, the Dr Stéphane Henriettepsychiatrist hospital practitioner at the Saint-Cyr hospital center in Mont-d’Or and secretary general of Hospital psychiatrists union denounced a phenomenon “of an unprecedented scale”. “We are undergoing these tensions, even these complete ruptures for drugs which are however essential in psychiatry: Quétiapine, very prescribed for bipolar disorders, lithium, reference treatment in these disorders, injectable olanzapine for prolonged liberation, used for schizophrenia, or serraline, a widely used anti-depressor. We are sometimes notified the day before for the day after that we will no longer be able to prescribe or renew certain drugs, “he deplored then.
