Read this before taking another aspirin for that headache that won’t go away: the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is convinced that some people (one in 50) experience headaches that are actually caused by pain medication, and that women are five times more likely to fall into that unfortunate category. A University of Warwick news release reports that NICE has told the UK’s National Health Service to be alert to the possibility in people whose headache developed or worsened while they were taking the following drugs for three months or more: Triptans, opioids, ergots or combination analgesic medications on 10 days per month or more, or as well as paracetamol, aspirin and an NSAID [non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, e.g. ibuprofen], either alone or any combination, on 15 days per month or more. “We have effective treatments for common headache types,” says Martin Underwood, a professor of primary care research at the University of Warwick and the leader of the team that developed the guidelines. “But taking these medicines for more than ten or fifteen days a month can cause medication overuse headache. Patients with frequent tension-type headaches or migraines can get themselves into a vicious cycle, where their headaches are getting increasingly worse, so they take more medication which makes their pain even worse as they take more medication.”
Read more from the University of Warwick.