Antimicrobial Chemotherapeutic Agents: The Nature of Their Action and Selective Toxicity

Abstract

ANTIMICROBIAL agents encompass both synthetic compounds and natural products or antibiotics. The vast majority of antimicrobial drugs synthesized or isolated do not possess the requisite selectivity to be useful in the treatment of infectious diseases — that is, they affect the host organisms as well as the parasites. In this review discussion will be limited primarily to agents that have been found to show acceptable selective toxicity toward microorganisms and, hence, clinical usefulness. Attention will be focused on both the mechanism of action of these antimicrobial drugs and the nature of the selective toxicity that they exhibit.Sweeping advances toward . . .