The longest-running drug shortages

FDA's drug shortage database gives a "date first posted" for each entry. For atropine sulfate injection, a decades-old drug that FDA files under anesthesia, neurology and pediatrics, that date is Jan. 1, 2012, according to the agency's records on openFDA¹. It is still listed as a current shortage.

Atropine is one of six drugs on FDA's current list that have been there for more than 10 years. GxRadar took the agency's shortage records from the openFDA drug shortages API, which FDA updates daily, as of Oct. 30, 2026, grouped them by drug, and ranked the 69 current shortages by the earliest date any of their presentations was first posted. The median current shortage has been listed for 1,708 days, about four years and eight months.

That figure sits awkwardly beside FDA's own headline numbers, which show new shortages falling to almost nothing. Both are true. New shortages have become rare, and the old ones mostly stay. Our shortage tracker shows the full current list, GxRadar's analysis of how long shortages last looks at the whole distribution, and FDA's drug shortages page⁶ links to the agency's own.

The 20 oldest entries on the current list

Source: GxRadar analysis of openFDA drug shortage records, data as of Oct. 30, 2026. Years listed are counted to Nov. 3, 2026. "Main reason" is the reason given most often across a drug's listed presentations. *A round-number date; see below.

Eighteen of the 20 are injections, and a 19th, cefotaxime, is an antibiotic powder mixed into solution for injection. Most are decades-old hospital staples: local anesthetics, sedatives, pain medicines, heart drugs used in intensive care, and the electrolytes that go into IV nutrition. FDA tags sodium acetate, for instance, under "Total Parenteral Nutrition."

Reading the dates with care

Two of the oldest entries share Jan. 1, 2012, as their first-posted date. A round date like that is safest read as "on or before." Either way, atropine and fentanyl injections have been on the list for nearly 15 years.

Our ranking also uses the earliest posting among all of a drug's presentations, meaning each listed strength, vial size or package. A drug can gain new presentations years after its first one. Lidocaine injection, for example, has 67 presentations on the list, posted on dates from 2012 to 2025. The shortage itself may have eased and tightened several times in between without ever coming off the list.

And "in shortage" does not mean nothing is on the shelf. FDA's shortage FAQ² says a drug is in shortage when national demand "exceeds the supply," and that a presentation marked available "is not an FDA determination that the shortage has been resolved." For 50 of the 69 current drugs, most presentations were marked available. Fourteen were mostly unavailable and five had limited availability.

How long the current list has been waiting

Source: GxRadar analysis of openFDA drug shortage records as of Oct. 30, 2026.

A large share dates from 2022 and 2023, when 11 and 17 of today's entries were first posted. That period included the 2023 cancer drug shortage. Carboplatin injection, posted April 28, 2023, is still listed, with most presentations marked unavailable and one supplier's note giving December 2026 as its estimated recovery.

Oral drugs are a minority. Six current entries are tablets and three are capsules. The oldest oral listing is rifampin capsules, posted Dec. 22, 2021, with the note "Discontinuation of the manufacture of the drug." Several stimulants used for ADHD, including mixed amphetamine salts tablets (posted Oct. 12, 2022) and lisdexamfetamine capsules (July 14, 2023), cite a shortage of active ingredient.

FDA's reasons are rarely illuminating. The law lets FDA cite seven, listed in the agency's FAQ², from good manufacturing practice problems to "demand increase for the drug." For 30 of the 69 current drugs the reason given most often is "Other," and for six none is stated. Demand increase leads for 15.

Why the old ones stay

FDA's annual reports to Congress show how much the flow of new shortages has slowed. The report for calendar year 2025³ counts four new shortages that year, against 55 in 2023, 15 in 2024 (the figure in the 2024 report⁵) and a peak of 251 in 2011. It also says FDA helped prevent 330 shortages in 2025.

That report also counts 93 ongoing shortages tracked by FDA's drug and biologics centers at the end of 2025, and gives a blunt explanation. "Shortages often persist due to market conditions," FDA wrote, "which include lack of incentives for firms to manufacture older, less profitable products as well as limited manufacturing capacity which results in manufacturers deprioritizing products that are not economically attractive." (FDA's count differs from our 69 because it includes biologics and counts shortages its own way.)

FDA's 2019 study, Drug Shortages: Root Causes and Potential Solutions⁴, had already flagged the pattern, noting that shortages "have been lasting longer, in some cases more than 8 years." Of 163 drugs that went into shortage from 2013 to 2017, 63 percent were sterile injectables and 67 percent had a generic version. Their median time since first approval was almost 35 years, and in the year before the shortage their median price was $8.73 per unit, $11.05 for injectables. Sixty-two percent went short after manufacturing or quality problems.

Those are the drugs at the top of today's list. GxRadar's explainers on why sterile injectables dominate shortage lists, why drug shortages happen and how FDA tracks shortages go into the economics. Seventeen current entries carry FDA's Pediatric tag, including atropine, fentanyl and lidocaine; we look at those in Pediatric drug shortages.

What the suppliers' notes say about the end

Each FDA listing carries notes from the companies that make the drug, and several current ones put dates on recovery. These are manufacturer estimates, and the FAQ² warns that presentation information "is provided by the manufacturer and can change daily." FDA considers a shortage resolved when it "determines that supply is no longer exceeded by demand or projected demand," the same FAQ says. In the most recently updated note for each drug, epinephrine with lidocaine injection and hydromorphone injection show an estimated recovery of March 2027, citing manufacturing delays. Sodium bicarbonate, ketorolac and lorazepam injections show June 2027.

The most distant date belongs to one of the newest entries. Pentostatin injection, a cancer drug first posted Aug. 27, 2026, carries a note reading "Next Delivery and Estimated Recovery: December 2028." If that estimate holds, it will have been on the list for more than two years before it comes off, still short of the median for the entries above it.