Particulates, label issues prompt separate recalls for Pfizer's Hospira and Accord

Right before the New Year, Pfizer's Hospira and Accord initiated a pair of drug recalls for separate reasons.

Hospira, which is owned by Pfizer, recalled one lot of its vancomycin hydrochloride injection vials at the 1.5-gram dose because of glass particles in the vials.

Accord, for its part, pulled a lot of 500-mg daptomycin after receiving a complaint from a hospital pharmacy about mislabeled cartons.

In the lot of Hospira injections, one vial was observed with two visible glass particles in it, the FDA said in a recall announcement in late December. Pfizer has not received reports of adverse events related to the recall, the agency added. The lot contained 100 vials and was distributed nationwide in the U.S. and Puerto Rico from June 23 through Sept. 19.

As for Accord, its 500 mg daptomycin injections have been pulled for being incorrectly labeled as another dosage strength.

Both companies and the FDA ask that wholesalers, distributors, doctors and institutions with discontinue use of the lots and stop distribution.

Daptomycin is used to treat complicated skin and skin structure infections caused by certain bacteria. Vancomycin hydrochloride, meanwhile, is an antibiotic approved to treat serious or severe infections caused by certain strains of methicillin-resistant staphylococci, which is known as a superbug that can cause difficult to treat staph infections. The antibiotic can also treat septicemia, bone infections, lower respiratory tract infections, and skin and skin-structure infections.

This wasn't Hospira’s first recall of 2022. In June, the company kicked off a similar recall after an internal inspection found visible particles in two vials of its 100-mL propofol injectable emulsion.

More recently, the company has been busy in the courts fighting with Astellas in its bid to launch a generic version of Lexiscan. Late last year, the company notched an appeals win in that case.