Prevention critical Cases of Lyme disease , an emerging infectious condition, declined 3 percent between 1998 and 1999, according to U.S. health officials. Lyme disease is a bacterial illness borne by deer ticks. Most cases result from exposure to ticks in the late spring and early summer.
Children are at the highest risk of infection.
Lyme disease is most common in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and North Central regions of the United States. In 1999, more than 90 percent of cases were reported in 109 counties in nine states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Physicians from the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians American Society of Internal Medicine and the Infectious Diseases Society of America developed new principles for the treatment of respiratory tract infections in response to an increase in the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria . Many people prefer to treat common upper respiratory tract infections with antibiotics, but antibiotics can't treat viral infections, which account for a large number of colds and infections. In the United States, an estimated 50 million antibiotic prescriptions are written for infections that don't respond to antibiotics each year.