Lifesaving drugs are in short supply in emergency rooms across the U.S., according to a team of GW researchers.

The study, which was published in the Academic Emergency Medicine journal found that drug shortages have quadrupled in emergency rooms across the country over a eight-year period.

The researchers, who were affiliated with the Milken Institute School of Public Health, the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the University of Utah School of Medicine, analyzed data from the University of Utah Drug Information Service for the years 2001 to 2014. Over the 13-year timeframe, 1,798 drug shortages were reported and 52.6 percent of the shortages were for lifesaving interventions. Ten percent of those were for drugs with no substitute.

“Many of those medications are for life-threatening conditions, and for some drugs no substitute is available,” Jesse Pines, a professor of emergency medicine and health policy at GW, said in a release. “This means that in some cases, emergency department physicians may not have the medications they need to help people who are in serious need of them.”

The researchers report that the emergency room shortages dropped from 2002 to 2007, but 435 percent more shortages appeared from 2008 to 2014. As the emergency room drug shortages quadrupled since 2008, 393 percent of those drugs lacking were used as a direct lifesaving intervention.

The study attributed the shortage to manufacturing delays, supply and demand issues and issues with raw materials, but 46.6 percent of shortages were for undetermined reasons.