A tick bite can make you become allergic to hamburgers. Alpha-gal syndrome — a red-meat allergy triggered by the Lone Star tick — is spreading so quickly that researchers just held the first-ever scientific conference on it. According to Scientific American, the CDC estimates 450,000 Americans have it, and a July study found about one in four people tested across five Southern states carried the antibodies.
Lone star tick saliva injects alpha-gal, a sugar found in mammal tissue but not in people. The immune system learns to attack it, so a burger, a glass of milk, or a gelatin capsule can trigger hives, nausea, or trouble breathing — often hours after the meal, which makes the culprit hard to spot.
The surge traces back to deer. Conservationists pulled white-tailed deer back from near-extinction, and lone star ticks feed on them. "We've created this perfect ecology for the lone star ticks to explode," said Holly Gaff, a biology professor at Old Dominion University. The ticks are spreading north and west as the climate warms.
Previously:
• Rising incidences of tick bite-induced "red meat allergy"
• A tick virus that needs only 15 minutes to infect you hit a record 76 US cases
