Drug shortage for childhood cancers

A U.S. shortage of injectable methotrexate -- a medication used in the treatment of several childhood cancers-- is alarming the nation's oncologists.

The drug was placed on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's list of short supply drugs after a manufacturing plant in Switzerland was shut down last year because of quality-control problems, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The plant supplied an estimated 85 percent of the drug used in the U.S. market. A third supplier has increased production of the drug, but hospitals are running low or are out of stock.

The drug is used for cancers, as well as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, lupus and Crohn's disease. But the shortage mainly affects the nearly 4,500 U.S. children diagnosed annually with leukemia, osteosarcoma and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

While adults with the same condition can take lower does in oral form, children need extremely high doses that they can get only in the injectable form.

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