A New Jersey dad who collapsed and died after eating a hamburger has now been identified as the first known fatality from a rare meat allergy caused by a tick bite.
The 47-year-old victim, an otherwise healthy airline pilot, is the first known death from alpha-gal syndrome, a disease spread by bites from the Lone Star Tick that has sickened hundreds, according to a study by researchers at the University of Virginia.
The otherwise unidentified New Jersey dad first noticed red meat made him sick after eating a steak on a family camping trip during the summer of last year, leaving him violently sick.
“I thought I was going to die,” he told his son the next morning, according to the study.
The pilot then attended a barbecue with his wife two weeks later where he had a burger. A few hours later, his son found him on the floor of the bathroom in a pool of vomit. He died later that night.
His death was initially labelled a “sudden unexplained death,” but blood tests showed he had alpha-gal syndrome, the obscure condition triggered by a bite from a Lone Star tick that causes severe allergic reactions to beef, pork, and lamb.
It is the first known fatality from it, the study said.
His wife had turned to Dr. Erin McFeely, a paediatrician friend, to help review the autopsy because her husband was otherwise healthy. They then sent a blood sample to the University of Virginia team.
After a slew of tests, the researchers asked if the man had ever been bitten by ticks. The wife recalled he had “chigger” bites around his ankles, which they concluded were actually Lone Star tick bites.
“A large number of physicians are not aware of the AGS,” said the scientists in their study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Saliva from the Lone Star tick contains the alpha-gal sugar, meaning bites can trigger an immune reaction to the same sugar that exists in red meat. The allergy that develops as a result can make force people to stop eating red meat, but death from the illness has never been reported before.
As the name suggests, this tick is actually from the south, but has begun migrating northward due to warming temperatures and large deer populations that serve as breeding grounds for their larvae.
“There is a major need for public education in areas where the tick is increasing,” reads the research paper.
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