ABSTRACT
The availability of a lot of new antimicrobials for successful therapy of many infections generated a widespread euphoria in the past, so that ‘‘most experts believe that by the year 2000 viral and bacterial infections will have disappeared from our life’’ (1). The recent and current epidemiology has totally put an end to that enthusiasm. Due to a series of phenomena such as immune suppression, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, migratory flows, and so on, infectious diseases are still an important challenge in the third millennium.
