ABSTRACT
Because the focus of immunotoxicologists has so often been on immunosuppression, very few medicinal products, and occupational or environmental chemicals have been recognised to exert unexpected or adverse immunostimulating properties. To some extent, the anti-H2 histamine receptor antagonist cimetidine (Ershler et al., 1983), the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor captopril (Tarkowsky et al., 1990), and the pesticide hexachlorobenzene (Michielsen et al., 1997) are possible examples of xenobiotics with immunostimulating properties, even though the actual consequences on human health of the immunostimulation presumably associated with exposure to these compounds remain to be established.
