Community-based prevention of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases through topical application of acaricide to white-tailed deer: background and rationale.

This series of articles describes the first large-scale experiment designed to explore the efficacy of reducing the risk of tick-borne disease in highly endemic communities of the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States through deployment of a self-application device that treats white-tailed deer with acaricide to prevent feeding by adult Ixodes scapularis ticks and all stages of Amblyomma americanum ticks where both species occur. The results of the multicenter study are reported in the accompanying articles in this issue. This article describes the background and rationale for this experiment by reviewing relevant literature on current tick-borne disease epidemics and previous efforts to reduce the public health burden of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases.