Summer is here, and so are ticks. But one bug in particular — the Lone Star tick — is causing quite the furor over a disconcerting side effect: a tick-related meat allergy that’s been seeing more and more prevalence across the U.S.
Allergists has seen hundreds of cases of the disease also known as alpha-gal syndrome, all the way from Macon, Georgia, to Southampton, New York, Dr. Scott Commins, an associated professor of medicine at the Thurston Research Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told USA Today.
Humans can thank a warming climate for increased tick territory, Dr. Purvi Parikh, a New York-based allergist, also told USA Today.
Wired detailed the allergic reaction vividly — if painfully: “First comes the unscratchable itching, and the angry blossoming of hives. Then stomach cramping, and — for the unluckiest few — difficulty breathing, passing out, and even death.”
One type of sugar in mammalian meat — known as alpha-gal — is responsible for the allergic reaction, Commins told USA Today. He added that doctors started noticing the reaction a little more than a decade ago, discovering Lone Star tick bites as the culprit.
The alpha-gal sugar is found in red meat, so the tick bites can bring reactions to anything from beef hamburgers to bacon, NPR reports.
One immunologist, Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, started hearing about the meat allergy in the 1990s, Wired reports. He didn’t think about it too much, but again learned of the phenomenon in 2004 when a collection of patients had similar symptoms. Both Platts-Mills and Commins are authors on the 2015 paper ” The alpha-gal story: lessons learned from connecting the dots.”
Because the allergy is so new, the government seemingly has yet to gather data regarding it. Commins adds that though the allergy may go away — and it usually does — more bites could mean a recurrence.
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Lone Star Tick Bites Might Give You a Meat Allergy originally appeared on usnews.com
