If it weren’t bad enough that ticks can cause Lyme disease, we now have to avoid them to ensure that we don’t suddenly become allergic to red meat.
Cases of this strange allergy occurring from Lone Star ticks were first identified back in 2007 at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Today, they are now being reported as far as the east end of Long Island, New York and making people who have never had a problem eating meat before in the past quite ill.
“It’s a huge problem out here,” says Erin McGintee, a pediatric and adult allergist in East Hampton. “I’ve been trying to get the word out—but there are still a lot of people who don’t believe it,” she told The Wall Street Journal.
According to McGintee, several cases of the allergic reaction occur every week.
The symptoms, which tend to set in three to six hours after a person eats pork, lamb or beef, can range anywhere from abdominal cramps to vomiting, and in some instances even anaphylaxis, sometimes leading to death. In a few rare instances, reactions have been caused from consuming marshmallows and gel-cap vitamins, since animal byproducts are used to make gelatin.
Many times, people are unable to detect the link between the bite and their sickness, especially if they were bitten weeks or months before the onset of their symptoms.
So far, no fatalities have been reported. Other meat-allergy cases associated with ticks have been reported in Spain, France and Sweden.
