Alert for lack of quetiapine. This medication is used to treat patients suffering from schizophrenia and bipolarity. The National Medicines Safety Agency sounds alarm. It will be very hard to have it before mid-September, minimum. It is an essential drug against psychiatric disorders that are in shortage.
Nearly 3 million Quetiapine boxes are sold each year to About 200,000 patients. It is therefore frequent treatment and supply difficulties are heavy with consequences.
“It can cause relapses in a few days, very depressive, suicidal or delusional cases. Each time, a lot of stress in patients who are fragile. Treatments are really in a case-by-case basis. The patient is sensitive to a precise prescription and not another. When one cannot maintain that balance, it is often very problematic “, explains Antoine Pelissolo, the head of the psychiatry department at Henri-Mondor Hospital in Créteil.
Recurring shortages
According to the drug safety agency, these supply difficulties are linked to a delay in packaging in a laboratory. Theoretically, there is still a little stock, but in fact, the drawers are empty.
Then Fabrice Camaioni, pharmacist in the Ardennes, must find alternatives. “You can have in another laboratory, it’s another box. We can confuse, think that this medication is an in addition.”
“And as there is a little bit of stock at the house of another laboratory, we have already seen patients who have taken the two drugs, who have doubled the doses, “he adds.
The shortages of psychotropic drugs are recurrent. Last April, professionals already alerted to persistent stock breaks For 14 substances.
