Abstract

The prophylactic use of drugs, chemicals and biological substances are necessary to meet the sanitation standards used to maintain high levels of health status. The aim of this article was to present the basic data of the active substance of enrofloxacin, the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and also the pharmacological safety of this drug. Enrofloxacin as a molecule belongs to the quinolone antimicrobial family, and it is a wide spectrum antibiotic that inhibits DNA gyrase activity in bacterial cells with bactericidal effect. It is at the center of growing attention because of its potential efficacy for the treatment of diseases. This drug is a fluorinated quinolone carboxylic acid derivative, traded as baytril, which has been widely used in veterinary medicine because of its broad spectrum activity. Enrofloxacin has extensively been tested for its safety and it was proven that this medication is rarely toxic in both intravenous and oral routes. Significant side effects occurred only in laboratory animals having a 10 times higher than the recommended dose. The active substance is not teratogenic or mutagenic and in most scientific findings, there is no evidence of a potential risk to applicators and consumers. As a conclusion, it can be used in different administration routes in farm animals against a wide range of microorganism. Also, enrofloxacin is not safe to be use in poultry as Campylobacter infections have increased significantly since the use of enrofloxacin in poultry because of the resistance of such organism to fluoroquinolone groups.