Popis: |
The age of antibiotics, or “the antibiotic era,” began in the 1930s with the sulfonamides. The quinolones were first introduced in the early 1960s and thus have spanned the last 30 years or half of the antibiotic era (Moellering 1995; Norris and Mandell 1988). The first of the quinolones to be used substantially was nalidixic acid, an antimicrobial agent that achieves good urinary tract levels but only minimal serum levels and, consequently, was and is still used as a drug for the treatment of urinary tract infections. However, within a short period of time it was recognized that resistance to nalidixic acid readily develops and consequently the drug fails to cure clinical infections. Because of this, nalidixic acid has not been used extensively in recent times as a therapeutic agent. Other quinolone antimicrobials were subsequently developed, for example oxalinic acid and cinoxacin; recently, however, these drugs also have not found a great deal of favor for the treatment of urinary tract infections. |