Immunomodulation by antimicrobial drugs

That some antimicrobial drugs may have adverse effects on the immune system has been largely ignored in clinical medicine. There is now a substantial body of knowledge to indicate that the immunomodulating properties of antimicrobial drugs may have important implications in prescriptive practice. This is particularly so for patients whose immune systems have been compromised by immunosuppressive drugs or their disease processes. This paper suggests that the immunomodulating properties of antimicrobial drugs can be predicted on the basis of their modes of action on microbial cells.