Mysterious meat allergy passed by ticks may affect hundreds of thousands in US, CDC estimates
Mysterious meat allergy passed by ticks may affect hundreds of thousands in US, CDC estimates
Alpha-gal syndrome – a reaction to a sugar found red meat and dairy products that is caused by lone star ticks – may now be the 10th most common food allergy in the United States, according to new CDC estimates. It is also one of the least recognized.
“This disease doesn’t have to be deadly if we just know about it,” McCullick said. “A lot of people could be saved just from the knowledge that needs to get out there.”
First time I heard about it.
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I remember when it was getting popular in the news, but I didn't know it was currently at 10th place in the allergy-lympics.
Does the allergy to red meat wear off or is it permanent?
I looked it up, it looks like it usually wears off, but as the article states there isn't enough research yet to say definitively how long it lasts.
Weeerd.
What the heck is the biological advantage to a tick making a human allergic to red meat?
Presumably the allergy is a side effect of an actually useful trait.
Or not. Sometimes random genetic shit just happens, and if it's not an actual negative trait it doesn't get selected out.
Yea I guess so. Why do ticks have alphagal venom?
Weird...weird.
I want to know more.
I wonder if there are other allergies you can get from animal bites?
I mean cats can make you allergic to cats by biting or scratching you, I know that.
I just looked it up, but I can't find any other ones.
Oh, this thing says that someone with a pollen allergy can become sensitive to a specific flower if they're frequently bitten by bees that collect nectar from those flowers. Huh.
Wears off. Took about 7 years.
Woo doggy. You had it? Did your eating habits permanently change or did your eventually go back to eating meat kebabs wrapped in flank steaks eventually?
My husband had it.
We never bought meat to use at home anyways, so in that aspect nothing really changed.
However it was kinda cumbersome when invited by other people, especially since we live in a backwards place where people consume meat daily. E.g. grandmas kept cooking red meat despite me trying to explain it multiple times and getting offended when he didn't eat it.
Oftentimes my husband would just eat a bit of it anyways and then spend the evening in the toilet throwing up, just to avoid the strange drama that telling people you can't eat meat causes.That's also how we figured out it goes away, since the doctor made it sound like it would be permanent. But eating the bit started to get less bad and then eventually stopped causing any issues. Now he can eat anything people serve again, which is saving us a lot of headache and drama.
Oftentimes my husband would just eat a bit of it anyways and then spend the evening in the toilet throwing up, just to avoid the strange drama that telling
I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, I just prefer a low meat diet, and that about lines up with the response I get when people find out about it. Somehow people just can't fathom not craving red meat.
Glad that it eventually worked out for you guys, that does sound like a pain socially.
What a bizarre malady, that timeline is wild.
Thanks for sharing your story!
Can I ask which general part of the country you're in?
I know the lone Star ticks prevalent in the East, but have heard that it's traveling Westward and is basically everywhere at this point.
I think it's Germany
We're not even in the US. We assume he got it from a trip to Mexico because he has never been to North America at all.
Oh, wow. I don't even think they're native to Mexico, but they easily could have spread there from Texas. Yikes.
Thanks
There's no advantage. The saliva of the tick just happens to contain a sugar molecule that's also in Red meat and it sets off quite a significant immune response resulting in the affected acquiring a new "allergy" (unwarranted immune response) to the meat. It should theoretically fade with time, but the immune system is a complex beast and works slightly differently in every human.
whats the advantage of giving humans tbe or lyme disease 🙈?
There's no inherent "advantage" so much as it's a result of the tick feeding off animals with those diseases inside them, and then passing those diseases on via its saliva to later meals like humans.
Additionally the bacteria that causes Lyme diseases may actually benefit from this relationship. The environment and nature doesn't make choices just at the benefit of humans, it's full scale every organism for themselves.
How do you think those bacteria could benefit?
Kind of hard to ~move around~ when you're that small, so it could be transport related. Plenty of bacteria and smaller organisms hitch a ride on intermediary hosts just for transport reasons, but they could also benefit in other ways tbh, life is weird and creative like that.
I like that mobility perspective, good point