Explosive increase of ticks that cause meat allergy

Sparkchaser

I hate ticks. Besides Lyme disease and other infections now they can cause you to be ‘allergic to red meat’. Lone star ticks are expanding from the southeast US to other areas. There could be as many as 450,000 people infected, 110,000 confirmed by the CDC.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/29/lone-star-ticks-increase-climate-crisis

egeezer

Sparkchaser

When us kids would come home with a tick on us and Mom saw it, she’d put Vaseline on them to make them let go. Some of the other kids would light a match and then put it down on the tick just to hear it pop.
I am reminded of this Brad Paisley classic;

dave

Sparkchaser ‘allergic to red meat’

Well, I suppose I’ll never know if I get infected with that :-)

broknsymetry

It’s a vegan conspiracy.

real_aurgathor

Sparkchaser now they can cause you to be ‘allergic to red meat’.

Is that only “now” and didn’t happen in the past? Maybe we should look into if there were any UN funded labs working with ticks.

HooRU

This has been a health issue for years. Needless to say, I don’t plan on visiting Texas any longer, but I have plenty of other reasons. It used to be a great place.

px_eliezer_

real_aurgathor Is that only “now” and didn’t happen in the past? Maybe we should look into if there were any UN funded labs working with ticks.

I assume that you’re being sarcastic. 🙂

Here is good (and very interesting) historical background on the identification of mammal meat allergy, also called red meat allergy, and more formally called alpha-gal syndrome.
https://news.virginia.edu/content/meet-doc-who-discovered-infamous-red-meat-allergy-spread-ticks

Dr. Platts-Mills (featured in the above article) has publicly commented that he is affected by alpha-gal personally.

More:
https://www.yalemedicine.org/conditions/alpha-gal-syndrome-ags
https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/conditions-library/allergies/alpha-gal-and-red-meat-allergy

It started in the southeast US but had steadily spread up the Atlantic Coast AND other areas too following the tick proliferation.

Canada is not hit yet but is just a matter of time.
https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Documents/A/24/alpha-gal-syndrome-ags.pdf

UNLIKE most other food allergy reactions, alpha-gal can cause serious reactions (including anaphylaxis) MANY HOURS after eating the relevant type of mammal meat or (less common) milk products, gelatin, etc.
https://health.osu.edu/health/skin-and-body/tick-that-causes-meat-allergy-is-spreading
https://www.cdc.gov/alpha-gal-syndrome/data-research/products-containing-alpha-gal/index.html (US Federal site)

The several-hours delay can make it hard for people (or doctors) to figure it out.

px_eliezer_

HooRU This has been a health issue for years. Needless to say, I don’t plan on visiting Texas any longer, but I have plenty of other reasons.

We have plenty of it in New Jersey….

For that matter it’s even in Maine and in Washington State.
https://www.jwatch.org/na58730/2025/05/06/tick-bites-linked-severe-alpha-gal-syndrome-across-us

HooRU

Wow, so they have spread to up here now? Damn, that really sucks. This is why I don’t like deer and rabbits; they spread ticks. My sistern’s dogs have spread them to me. My brother got the other tick born disease for months. All the more reason to not go out into nature now, which sucks. I used to be an avid camper.

Somewhat-Reticent

Sounds similar to α-Galactosidase of Beano fame, but it differs.

HooRU

The thought of a tick ruining my enjoyment of Texas BBQ Brisket is really worrisome.

px_eliezer_

Somewhat-Reticent Sounds similar to α-Galactosidase of Beano fame, but it differs.

Yes, Beano contains alpha-galactosidase, an enzyme that helps break down a type of non-absorbable fiber found in beans, root vegetables, and some dairy products.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/digestive-enzymes-how-supplements-like-lactaid-and-beano-can-help-with-digestion

But a quite serious disease is Fabry Disease.
Fabry disease is a rare inherited disorder of glycosphingolipid (fat) metabolism resulting from the absent or markedly deficient activity of the lysosomal enzyme, α-galactosidase A (α-Gal A). This disorder belongs to a group of diseases known as lysosomal storage disorders.
https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/fabry-disease/

By contrast, the Mammal Meat (Red Meat) Alpha-Gal is due to allergy against the carbohydrate (sugar) named galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose.

I actually HAVE seen some confusion between the two (Mammal Meat allergy and Fabry Disease) due to these names, even at a hospital lab.

telcodad

px_eliezer_ HooRU This has been a health issue for years. Needless to say, I don’t plan on visiting Texas any longer, but I have plenty of other reasons.

We have plenty of it in New Jersey….

Yes, the last tick that I found on myself here in central NJ was a lone star one. My doctor prescribed a high-dose of Doxycycline as a preventative. They told me about the red meat allergy thing (alpha-gal syndrome) then.

urbanriot

Sparkchaser I’m not a big vaccine guy but I’ll sure as hell take a vaccine that prevents me from being allergic to red meat.

Damn that’s scary.

px_eliezer_

urbanriot I’m not a big vaccine guy but I’ll sure as hell take a vaccine that prevents me from being allergic to red meat.

It is ironic….

The goal of vaccinations generally is to [create good antibodies] against various diseases.

But when the tick bites us, introducing into our body some Alpha-Gal carbohydrate from another mammal (such as a deer), that TICK is basically vaccinating US, in a bad way because it is [creating bad antibodies].

These are the antibodies that subsequently react when we eat anything that contains the Alpha-Gal carbohydrate (which is most mammals EXCEPT for humans).

Again ironically, the reason that humans do NOT have the Alpha-Gal molecule (unlike other mammals) may have been an evolutionary adaptation to help fight disease.

It has been proposed that humans evolved by losing the capacity to synthesize α-Gal to increase the protective immune response against pathogens with this modification on their surface.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7348772/

Likewise:

Alpha-Gal syndrome Trade-off between allergy and protection to infectious diseases
https://researchoutreach.org/articles/alpha-gal-syndrome-trade-off-between-allergy-protection-infectious-diseases/

It can be argued from an evolution POV that Alpha-Gal is a GOOD thing:

1) Reduce mammal (red) meat consumption.
2) Help fight infections….

Somewhat-Reticent

(“Red meat”!? Like pork and mutton? Who calls those “red meat”?)
(Sounds more like it induces an allergy to “clean” meats - go figure.)
Bad allergy cases can be affected by dairy products too.
And gelatin (like around capsules & softgels?), and some drugs …

But there’s also a tradeoff:
“malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, sleeping sickness, Lyme disease and Leishmaniasis”