Trends in the research on antimicrobial agents

The pharmacotherapy of microbial diseases has achieved brilliant success in the last 40 years, but it still deserves a great research interest. In fact, microbial infections remain the major cause of morbidity, with a definite incidence in mortality. Several dozen antimicrobial agents have been introduced in the therapy of infectious diseases. An active area of research concerns deepening knowledge of chemotherapeutic activity in various pathological conditions, mechanism of action, development of resistance, kinetics, and untoward effects of the available drugs in order to achieve the best utilization. Many researches are also directed at identifying the proper use of combinations of antimicrobials to define synergistic effect or inhibition of resistant strain selection. Finally there are continuous research efforts toward the development of new agents to overcome the drawbacks of the available ones. This problem is approached mainly in two ways, either by modification of the present antimicrobial drugs or by search for completely new entities through various screening sophistications. Examples of studies and results in the mentioned fields are reviewed.