First Person Dies Of Alpha

A 47-year-old airline pilot from New Jersey is the first person confirmed to have died of alpha-gal syndromea dangerous meat allergy transmitted by ticks.

The unnamed man had gone camping with his family in the summer of 2024, according to research published in theJournal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.The family had a steak dinner, after which the man had “abdominal discomfort, which became so severe that he was writhing in pain, having diarrhea and vomiting.” The next day, he recovered, but told one of his sons “during the episode ‘I thought I was going to die.’ “

Two weeks later, they went to a barbecue where he had a hamburger at approximately 3 pm.

About four and a half hours later, one of the man’s sons “found his father unconscious on the floor of the bathroom with vomit around him; the son called 911 at 7:37 PM and initiated resuscitation. The paramedics continued resuscitation efforts for 2 hours, which included transferring the patient to hospital, but at 10:22 PM, he was declared dead.”

No cause of death could be determined, theSTRONGERresearch says, with the autopsy listing “sudden unexplained death” as the cause. However, his wife reached out to Dr. Erin McFeely, a pediatrician and friend. Together, they questioned if the tick-borne meat allergy was behind his death, and contacted the University of Virginia’s Health’s Dr.Thomas Platts-Mills, who discovered the allergy. Through testing, he concluded that the man had died from it.

Although the man didn’t have any clear tick bites, his wife said he had a dozen “chigger” bites around his ankle. In the eastern U.S., “chiggers” are often actually the larvae of lone star ticks, which carry the sugar molecule alpha-gal in saliva. It’s a molecule found in beef, pork, lamb and the meat of most mammals, and the tick bite can trigger an allergic response. The symptoms of AGS can range from mild, with patients experiencing gastrointestinal problems, to severe, with some experiencing anaphylaxis.

The only treatment for alpha-gal syndrome is to not eat red meat or other products from mammals that can trigger reactions.

“It is important that both doctors and patients who live in an area of the country where Lone Star ticks are common should be aware of the risk of sensitization,” Dr. Platts-Mills said in a press release from UVA Health. “ specifically, if they have unexpected episodes of severe abdominal pain occurring several hours after eating mammalian meat, they should be investigated for possible sensitization to the oligosaccharide alpha-gal.”

The important things to watch out for, Dr. Platts-Mills says, are, “first, that severe abdominal pain occurring 3 to 5 hours after eating beef, pork or lamb should be investigated as a possible episode of anaphylaxis; and, second, that tick bites that itch for than a week or larvae of ticks often called ‘chiggers’ can induce or increase sensitization to mammalian-derived meat.”