Abstract
Medication overuse was first described with too frequent or daily use of ergotamine in 1951 by Peters and Horton.1 The same authors described 52 patients who took daily ergotamine, developed daily headache, and noted improvement after ergotamine was withdrawn.2 The fact that the frequent intake of analgesics may lead to chronic headache was first observed in Switzerland, where workers in the pharmaceutical industry were given free samples of pain medication containing phenacetin.3 The International Headache Society developed criteria for the diagnosis of medication overuse which were revised the last time in 2004.4 My personal experience with medication overuse headache (MOH) dates from the first International Headache Congress in Munich were I presented one of three posters dealing with this problem. The same topic attracted 155 submissions to the 2007 Congress of the International Headache Society, reflecting the increase in awareness and importance of this issue. About 2 to 3% of the population in developed countries has chronic headache, which by definition means headache on more than 15 days per month. Medication overuse is the cause of chronic headache in about 0.5% to …
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