How extreme weather could lead to drug shortages
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Climate change could drive up demand for drugs to treat asthma, kidney disease and Alzheimer's and add to supply chain disruptions that can jeopardize patient care, according to new RAND estimates.
Why it matters: While a growing body of research has established a link between extreme weather and poor health, there's a knowledge gap around how climate change could affect supplies of common medicines.
- Researchers say improved models could help guide contingency planning, including stockpiling drugs, strengthening supply chains for some high-demand products, or onshoring production.
Threat level: The RAND simulation looked at how events like extreme heat days, hurricanes and wildfire-associated changes in air quality could affect the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, asthma, end-stage renal disease and Alzheimer's — and, in turn, alter drug usage.
- Demand for three common frontline treatments — the inhalation drug albuterol for asthma, the blood-thinner heparin used in dialysis, and the Alzheimer's drug donepezil, or Aricept — is likely to rise through 2040.
- But extreme weather is projected to result in more deaths from cardiovascular disease over that time and actually lower demand for a fourth widely used drug — the blood pressure treatment metoprolol.
- Demand for albuterol and heparin is likely to rise across most or all age groups, while demand for donepezil will rise among adults ages 55 and older.
What they're saying: "As climate change intensifies, the model projects that drug demand will generally increase, except in cases where higher mortality rates lead to a decrease in demand," researchers wrote.
- "Suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and providers ... need a better understanding of how climate change could affect disease burden and the demand for drugs."
Between the lines: Previous research has shown that summers are becoming deadlier as heat waves blanket millions in extreme conditions whose public health consequences were until recently not fully understood.
- Social determinants of health like income and health literacy can heavily factor in who's most at risk.
- Hurricanes have also been shown to have long-term health effects, notably excess deaths from the social and economic upheaval left in their wake.
What's ahead: Future studies could examine infectious diseases that are spreading faster because of climate change and demand for drugs that can be interchangeably used to treat a given condition.
