Headache from religious fast? Researchers may have a cure

Every year millions of Jews fast on their holiest day, Yom Kippur, and millions of Muslims fast for the month of Ramadan -- and every year, as many as 40 per cent of those fasting develop serious headaches. But given the prohibitions against taking anything by mouth, there's little these observers can do until the fast ends - nightly for Muslims, and after 25 hours for Jews.

Now, a team of researchers in Israel, reporting in the journal Headache, think they have a solution -- a cousin of Vioxx (rofecoxib), the drug Merck pulled from the US market in September 2004 because it increased the risks of heart attacks and other serious complications.

The drug, etoricoxib (Arcoxia), also made by Merck, is approved in several European countries, as well as Israel, but was refused FDA approval in the United States in 2007 because it works the same way Vioxx does.

Dr. Michael Drescher, of Hartford Hospital, Connecticut, and colleagues at two hospitals in Israel recruited more than 200 volunteers before Yom Kippur in October 2008