diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index ebb373f..636bdcf 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
 genshi==0.7.*
 lxml>=4.9.3, <= 5.0.0
 pandas>=2.0.3 , <= 3.0.0
-pyyaml==5.*
+# pyyaml set to v5.3.* to prevent problems with setuptools upon installation, as described here: https://github.com/yaml/pyyaml/issues/723#issuecomment-1638560401
+pyyaml==5.3.*
 requests>=2.31.0 , <= 3.0.0
 openpyxl>=3.1.2 , <= 4.0.0
 jsonschema>=4.19.1