The body remembers

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It… rising tick risks.

Johns Hopkins reports that emergency department visits for tick bites were up more than 25% from April last year to this year. While the risks associated with ticks and Lyme disease have been well publicized, cases of another tick reaction have been growing.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: In some cases, lone star tick bites trigger an allergy to red meat and mammal byproducts like dairy. The reaction is known as alpha-gal syndrome. The condition has no known cure and those who develop it report having to make drastic lifestyle changes.

After a walk during her pregnancy in early 2024, Hannah Velier found a tick bite on the back of her knee. At first, it seemed harmless.

VELIER: Like, ticks, you know, that’s just part of our life living here in Missouri, and especially in the Ozarks. My whole life we’ve dealt with ticks, you know, not really ever thought twice about them.

BROWN: A month later, Velier started experiencing numbness in her throat and swelling in her lips. Then came severe joint pain, difficulty breathing, stomach cramps, and low blood pressure. A family member suggested Velier get tested for alpha-gal syndrome.

VELIER: When I was 15 weeks pregnant, my labs came back positive, and I was floored. I was like, what?

REICHARD: Velier cut out all mammal meat and by-products, and more. Soaps with animal-derived glycerin, gelatin medicine capsules, water that passed through mammal bone filters, and even certain kinds of toilet paper had to go.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says as many as 450,000 people may have alpha gal.

BROWN: Researchers primarily blame lone star ticks… which tend to feed on deer. The ticks retreated to the southern states in the 1800s because of deforestation and deer hunting. Here’s Dina Fonseca, chair of the Department of Entomology at Rutgers University:

FONSECA: So if you remove the habitat and you remove the host, you get no ticks.

REICHARD: But the population of white-tailed deer has recently rebounded. This means lone star ticks have been able to travel further.

Alpha-gal molecules are found in red meat like beef and pork but not in humans. The ticks transmit the molecules when they bite into a victim’s skin. Fonseca believes lone stars may use alpha-gal to regulate the host’s immune response.

FONSECA: So when a tick is blood feeding, they need to prevent coagulation from happening where they're biting, because a tick feeds for several days.

BROWN: The longer the tick feeds, the more alpha-gal it transmits. In some cases, the bitten person then develops an allergy to the alpha-gal in the tick’s saliva.

Velier turned to holistic therapy and noticed her reaction to cooked meat isn’t so severe. Her recent bloodwork also shows a reduced presence of alpha-gal antibodies. But she still avoids red meat.

VELIER: With two small children, I don't dare run that risk of landing in the ICU or something. Or having them have to witness me being severely sick.

REICHARD: Not all lone star tick bites lead to a red meat allergy…and other types of ticks might cause alpha-gal syndrome as well. Lone star ticks may simply prompt the allergic reaction more often because they hunt humans more aggressively than most other tick species.

Here’s Fonseca again:

FONSECA: But people have talked about finding alpha-gal, so red meat allergy, in other parts of the world where lone stars are not present. So it's not like it's a one-to-one.

BROWN: Experts say the ratio of alpha-gal infections to tick bites is low. Still, it’s recommended to use bug spray and check for lone star ticks.

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