Back in late 2024, I was writing about the spread of meat allergies among US farmers who became allergic to the very products they made after being bitten by ticks that transmitted alpha-gal syndrome, a life-threatening meat allergy. It is now being reported that the allergy has taken its first human life.
Researchers at the University of Virginia say a 47-year-old New Jersey man, an airline pilot, died in 2024 after suffering a delayed allergic reaction to a hamburger he’d eaten hours earlier.
According to a newly published case report, the man had already experienced a mysterious episode two weeks before his death, during a family camping trip. After a late steak dinner, he woke up with severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting. The misery subsided by morning.
On the day he died, the man attended a barbecue and ate a burger around 3 p.m. By early evening, he fell violently ill again. He was unconscious minutes later. His son attempted to revive him, along with paramedics and eventually hospital staff. He was pronounced dead at 10:22 PM. Initial autopsy found no culprit, leading the coroner to label his passing as a “sudden unexplained death.”
His wife refused to accept that explanation. She contacted researchers who tested his postmortem blood. They found high levels of IgE antibodies, the same type of antibody that causes a food allergy. He also had elevated tryptase, an enzyme that spikes during severe allergic reactions. Combined with his symptoms and recent beef exposure, the team concluded he had died from anaphylaxis caused by alpha-gal syndrome.
Alpha-gal syndrome is one of the weirder allergies out there. It’s triggered primarily by bites from the lone star tick, which is most commonly found in the eastern United States and in parts of Mexico, though it has been wandering northward, now cropping up in places like New Jersey.
Alpha-gal reactions typically set in three to six hours after eating mammalian meat. Scientists estimate that as many as 450,000 Americans have developed the condition since 2010, and many Americans aren’t even aware of its threat yet.
With more Americans than ever crossing paths with the lone star tick, and with alpha-gal syndrome on the rise, the researchers hope their work can spread awareness about this rapidly spreading (and now, apparently, deadly) tick-induced illness.
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