The past year has been a sobering reassessment of the state of affairs in the treatment of diarrheal diseases. The enlarging experience using quinolones in acute diarrhea has demonstrated clinical failure due to induced resistance in campylobacteriosis and bacteriologic failure in acute salmonellosis. Oral aztreonam has appeared on the horizon as a potential therapy that may solve some of the therapeutic dilemmas posed by the oral quinolones. Problems with widespread antimicrobial resistance continue to be catalogued. Foodborne listeriosis has emerged as a very significant public health and economic problem currently lacking a solution. Gastrointestinal infections remain extremely common in human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients and reviews have emphasized the need for specific rather than empiric therapy because of the lengthy differential diagnosis of these conditions in human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients.