How being bitten by a tick can leave you allergic to RED MEAT

If you get bitten by a tick this summer, you might just dismiss it as a nuisance and think nothing of it.

But doctors are now urging you to be wary of a bizarre yet potentially deadly side effect — an allergy to red meat.

Their alert follows the case of a Czech man, who suffered a cardiac arrest from the little-known complication.

The 68-year-old, who lived near the city of Pilsen, was unaware that he’d even been bitten by a tick.

The man, who medics did not identify, was suddenly struck down with anaphylaxis after tucking into his dinner of spicy pork kidneys.

About an hour later, the man was found by his wife gasping in his chair, struggling to breathe. His heart temporarily stopped.

His wife called the emergency services and was talked through how to give him CPR by a phone operator.

By the time an ambulance arrived the man was conscious and breathing, but he was still in a poor condition and taken to hospital.

During a physical examination medics found a tick embedded in his skin, which they extracted. 

Describing the case in the European Journal of Case Reports in Internal Medicine, medics said initial test results of an elevated white blood cell count and a shadow on his lung initially led them to believe he had sepsis from pneumonia.

However, while they gathered his medical history his wife mentioned the man had started to feel itchy after his lunch.

This made the team of medics suspect an allergic reaction was instead to blame.

Further blood tests suggested the man had suffered anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction, supporting their hypothesis.

Accounting for his allergic reaction from something he ate, and the tick, the doctors then ‘connected the dots’ to the possibility their patient had developed alpha-gal syndrome.

Tests for the specific antibody that triggers the red meat allergy came back positive and the man was officially diagnosed.

Alpha-gal syndrome, colloquially called a ‘red meat allergy’, is technically triggered by a specific sugar of the same name.

It is only found in the flesh of mammals, such as pork, beef, rabbit, lamb, and venison.

While sufferers must obviously shy away from burgers and steaks, they also must beware of dairy and gelatine products which can also contain alpha-gal.

Alpha-gal syndrome symptoms are mostly consistent with other allergic reactions such as a rash and swelling of the mouth and throat, which can cause dangerous breathing difficulties. 

Symptoms usually develop three to six hours after ingesting red meat as alpha-gal enters the blood stream during digestion. 

However, for reasons scientists are still exploring, the severity of the symptoms varies per case. 

It is known, however, that subsequent tick bites for people already with alpha-gal syndrome can make the allergy worse. 

What exactly triggers alpha-gal syndrome is poorly understood because it occurs so rarely following a tick bite. 

Scientists are still trying to unpick if the chance of getting it is related to a quality of some ticks’ saliva, a quirk of some people’s immune system reacting to the saliva, or a combination of both. 

Further complicating matters is that tests for alpha-gal syndrome, which involve pricking a patient’s skin with beef or pork extracts following a tick bite, are unreliable, meaning people may not know they have it until eating red meat. 

Writing in the journal, the authors warned that cases of alpha-gal syndrome could increase as rising global temperatures expanded the range of many ticks. 

‘As global warming continues, we may expect tick-borne diseases to spread wider around the globe,’ they wrote.

With this case they said medics needed to increase their awareness of alpha-gal syndrome when treating patients suffering heart problems with no clear cause.

Experts are growing increasingly concerned about the spread of diseases carried by ticks and mosquitoes to traditionally cooler areas, like the UK, as average temperatures rise. 

There are an estimated 34,000 cases of alpha-gal syndrome in the US.

However, some suspect as many as 10million Americans may be living undiagnosed with a minor form of the condition.

Cases in the UK are very rare, with only a handful ever reported in medical literature.  

Alpha-gal syndrome was discovered in 2001 when Dr Thomas Platts-Mills, a medicine professor at the University of Virginia, was working on a monoclonal antibody drug when he noticed it causing anaphylaxis in a few patients. 

After failing to treat a person with the drug, called Cetuximab, an investigation found the antibodies were being attacked by separate ones inside the body.

Further investigation revealed the drug’s antibodies had AGS in them because they were grown using animal cells.

Perhaps the most famous person to publicly acknowledge suffering from AGS is mystery writer John Grisham, who caught it after a tick bite and no longer eats meat.