The 4-quinolone antibiotics: past, present, and future.

During the past 5 years the 4-quinolone antibiotics have progressed from relative obscurity to a highly visible and intensely studied class of compounds. The zeal for developing and marketing newer fluoroquinolones closely parallels that of the cephalosporins for the last 10 years. All of these newer agents appear to have similar mechanisms of action, but numerous derivatives of the basic 4-quinolone structure have been synthesized in an effort to enhance the antimicrobial spectrum and pharmacologic properties of these antibiotics.