摘要
antibiotics are a important class of drugs, without them there would be losses in life expectancy achieved over decades. but the power of antibiotics is threatened by bacterial resistance. there is an explosion of cases reported in the literature. in fact, the increase in bacterial resistance, particularly among potentially dangerous pathogens, has led to an increased need for new drugs and new classes of antibiotics for both infections acquired in hospitals and in the community. however, despite this need, only two new classes of antibiotics have been introduced in medicine since 1963, when nalidixic acid was approved: one in 2000 and one in 2003. the article discusses this issue.