New drugs could hinder bone healing

Painkillers used in sport to help players perform while injured might hinder the healing of broken bones, researchers warned yesterday.

Studies on rats suggest that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can delay or even prevent the mending of fractures. NSAIDs, which include aspirin and drugs made from ibuprofen such as Nurofen, are taken by millions of people, often to ease the pain of broken bones.

But, in a report today for New Scientist magazine, researchers voice the fear that some of the newer NSAIDs might seriously hamper bone healing – aspirin excepted.

Jeremy Saklatvala, of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London, said the area needed to be investigated urgently. "People with healing fractures should steer clear of these drugs," he said.

A team led by Dr Patrick O'Connor at the University of New Jersey gave the newer drugs rofecoxib and celecoxib to rats with bone fractures. None of the rats healed completely, though about half of those treated with celecoxib had some bone growth.

Dr O'Connor said ibuprofen and indomethacin delayed bone healing by one or two weeks in rats, which was equivalent to slowing it down by 25 to 50 per cent in humans.

Merck, which makes rofecoxib, sold as Vioxx, said a study on spinal fusion surgery found no bone healing problems. But Thomas Einhorn, an orthopaedic surgeon at Boston University, and a paid consultant to Merck, said: "It would seem that a prudent approach is to temporarily avoid the use of these drugs during bone healing."