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The first person has died due to alpha-gal syndrome, Life-threatening allergy to red meat He May appear after a tick bite,
The unidentified 47-year-old man from New Jersey was healthy until a camping trip with his wife and children in the summer of 2024, UVA Health Explained Thursday.
One night, after the family ate a late steak dinner at 10 p.m., the airline pilot then woke up at 2 a.m. experiencing severe stomach pain, diarrhea, and vomiting.
By morning he had recovered, but he said to his son: “I thought I was going to die.”
Two weeks later, he went to a barbecue and ate a hamburger at about 3 p.m. Four hours later, he started feeling sick.
The man went to the bathroom at 7:20 pm, 10 minutes later his son found him collapsed on the floor and surrounded by vomit.
The son called 911 and attempted to revive his father. Paramedics who arrived at his home tried for two hours, during which the man was taken to hospital.
But, doctors could not save him and he was declared dead at 10:22 pm
A medical examiner found no significant abnormalities in the man’s heart, brain, respiratory or gut health. His autopsy was deemed inconclusive and his cause of death was ruled as “sudden unexplained death.”
However, his wife wanted to know why her husband died. She contacted a doctor to review her autopsy, which later included UVA Health allergist Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, in hopes of understanding whether alpha-gal syndrome could have played a role.
Doctors at Platts-Mills and UVA Health tested the man’s blood sample for a variety of allergies and found that it had been sensitized to alpha-gal.
The blood also indicated the man had had an extreme reaction, as seen in fatal anaphylaxis: an extreme allergic reaction that makes breathing difficult and causes hives.
When the man’s wife told Platts-Mills that her husband had been bitten 12 or 13 times over the summer by microscopic mites called chiggers, the doctor realized that many of those bites were actually from Lone Star tick larvae.
Platts-Mills said she and her colleagues also suspect that the beer the man drank on the day of his death, and his exposure to ragweed pollen, may have contributed to the severity of his reaction.
“The important information for the public is this: first, that severe abdominal pain occurring three to five hours after eating beef, pork or lamb should be investigated as a possible episode of anaphylaxis; and, second, that tick bites that cause itching for more than a week or that tick larvae, often called ‘chiggers,’ may induce or increase sensitivity to mammalian-derived meat,” Platts-Mills said.
“On the other hand, most individuals who have mild to moderate episodes of hives can control symptoms with a proper diet,” he said.
While it was previously believed that alpha-gal syndrome was solely associated with star ticks alone, researchers have identified two other species that can produce an allergic reaction.
Deer ticks and western black-legged ticks have also been tied to alpha-gal. Tick activity increases in summer months, prompting mass Americans to flee in eastern usa – exposed.
When ticks bite us, scientists believe they can spread the sugar molecule alpha-gal throughout people’s bodies, disrupting their immune systems.
This way they become sensitive to the alpha-gal molecule also found in mammalian meat, such as beef, pork, or lamb.
There is no cure for this condition, and without it, anaphylaxis can be fatal. Treatment with a shot of prescription medicine called epinephrineWhich is also called adrenaline.
People may experience nausea, vomiting, and rash about two to six hours after eating something containing alpha-gal. Mayo Clinic,
has been about 110,000 suspected cases Across the United States from 2010 to 2022. However, researchers believe this may be a low number and the delay in symptoms makes diagnosis difficult.