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

A Czech man’s succulent dinner of spicy pork kidneys was nearly his last thanks to a bite from a sesame seed-sized creature.

Medics have described a rare case of a man who developed alpha-gal syndrome or an allergy to red meat from a tick bite.

Although poorly understood, experts believe the little-known condition arises from a foreign antibody reaction to the saliva injected into the body as the parasite bites.

Experts warned, though rare, they suspect cases of the condition will increase as climate change expands the natural range of ticks that can cause the allergy.

The unnamed 68-year-old man, who lived near the city of Pilsen, had enjoyed his dinner of spicy pork kidneys one evening without any problems.

About an hour later, however, he was found by his wife, panting in his chair, struggling to breathe.

His wife called emergency services and after his heart stopped, an operator told her how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

By the time an ambulance arrived, the man’s heart rate had returned to normal, but he was still in a bad condition and was taken to hospital.

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

Medics, who described the case in the European Journal of Case Reports in Internal Medicineinitial test results of an elevated white blood cell count and a shadow of his lung initially said they believed he was suffering from sepsis from pneumonia.

However, while they were taking his medical history, his wife said the man started feeling itchy after his lunch.

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

Further blood tests with clear markers suggesting the man had suffered anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction, supported this hypothesis.

Taking into account his allergic reaction to something he ate, and the tick extracted earlier, the doctors then “connected the dots” with the possibility that their patient had developed alpha-gal syndrome.

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

Alpha-gal syndrome, colloquially referred to as a “red meat allergy,” is technically caused by a specific sugar of the same name and is found only in the meat of mammals, such as pork, beef, rabbit, lamb, and venison.

While patients should of course avoid burgers and steaks, they should also be wary of dairy and gelatin products that may also contain alpha-gal.

Symptoms of alpha-gal syndrome usually coincide with other allergic reactions, such as skin rashes and swelling of the mouth and throat, which can cause dangerous breathing difficulties, although other non-typical problems such as abdominal pain are also recorded.

Symptoms usually develop three to six hours after ingestion of red meat, because alpha-gal enters the bloodstream during digestion.

However, for reasons that scientists are still investigating, the severity of symptoms varies from case to case.

However, it is known that later tick bites in people who already have alpha-gal syndrome can make the allergy worse.

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

Scientists are still trying to unravel whether the likelihood of getting it is related to the quality of some ticks’ saliva, a quirk of some people’s immune system responding to the saliva, or a combination of the two.

Complicating matters is that tests for alpha-gal syndrome, in which a patient’s skin is pricked with beef or pork extracts after a tick bite, are unreliable, meaning people may not know they have it until they eat red meat.

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

“As global warming continues, we can expect tick-borne diseases to spread around the world,” they wrote.

With this case, they said physicians should raise awareness of alpha-gal syndrome when treating patients with heart problems with no apparent cause.

Experts are increasingly concerned about the spread of tick and mosquito-borne diseases to traditionally cooler areas, such as the UK, as average temperatures rise.

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

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

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

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

After failing to treat a person with the drug, called Cetuximab, a study found that the antibodies were being attacked by separate antibodies in the body.

Further investigation revealed that the drug’s antibodies contained AGS because they had been cultured 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 stopped eating meat.