A Tick Bite Could Make You Allergic To Red Meat

As if tick-related illnesses like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever weren’t bad enough, researchers have discovered what looks like another tick problem. Tick bites, researchers claim, can make you allergic to red meat.

No one is sure why this is taking place, but scientists now believe that if you get bitten by a tick, something in tick saliva may lead your immune system to crank out antibodies to a sugar found in meat known as alpha-gal. This is an unusual type of allergy, since most allergic conditions are responses to proteins.

The researchers think the red meat allergy is linked to the lone star tick which has been spreading across the United States. An unusual feature of the allergy is that it does not occur right after you eat a steak or burger. In most cases, a victim develops hives, breathing problems and other allergic symptoms four to eight hours after consuming meat.

Some people have such severe anaphylactic reactions to meat that they have had to be hospitalized.

“You do not get hives until four hours, and you have no idea how strange that is for us as allergists,” University of Virginia researcher Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills says. “It’s a completely new form of food allergy in which you eat beef or pork or lamb, and three or four hours later, you develop hives.”