School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Taishan Medical University, Taian, Shandong Province, People's Republic of China. Department of Pharmacy, Qianfoshan Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong Province, People's Republic of China.
Fungal infections remain a challenge to clinicians due to the limited available antifungals. With the increasing use of antifungals in clinical practice, the drug resistance has been emerging continuously, especially fluconazole. Thus, searching for new antifungals and approaches to overcome antifungals resistance is needed. However, the development of new antifungals is usually costly and time consuming,while discovering the antifungal activity of non-antifungal agents is one of the ways to add...更多
Fungal infections remain a challenge to clinicians due to the limited available antifungals. With the increasing use of antifungals in clinical practice, the drug resistance has been emerging continuously, especially fluconazole. Thus, searching for new antifungals and approaches to overcome antifungals resistance is needed. However, the development of new antifungals is usually costly and time consuming,while discovering the antifungal activity of non-antifungal agents is one of the ways to address these problems. Interestingly, some researchers demonstrated that several classes of immunosuppressants also displayed potent antifungal activity when used alone or in combination with antifungals, especially with fluconazole. Some of them could increase fluconazole's susceptibility against resistant Candida albicans significantly, reverses fungal resistance to fluconazole. This article reviews the antifungal activities of immunosuppressants used alone or in combination with antifungals and their potential antifungal mechanisms have been discovered so far. Although immunosuppressive agents are identified as risk factors for fungal infection, however, we believe these findings are very important for overcoming drug resistance and developing new antifungals. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.收起
