Tuberculosis and other antimycobacterial diseases are considered to be one of the most important problems of the health service at present. Since 1985, and in particular in the 1990s, a search for new structures of antimycobacterial substances has ranked among the prior fields of chemothera- peutic research. The present review paper links up with the previous communications, and surveys the studies carried out in the field of five-membered heterocyclic compounds containing more heteroatoms since 1984. The most frequently investigated field is thiazole derivatives but the most successful papers originated in the group of oxazoles, where effective antituberculotics for clinical use can be expected in the future. The present research is based on the journal Chemical Abstracts and original papers.

        Key words: tuberculostatics –five-membered heterocycles – mycobacteria – antituberculotics