Scientists document a death from a meat allergy tied to certain ticks

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Scientists document a death from a meat allergy tied to certain ticks

2025-11-15 04:57 Last Updated At：05:00

NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers have reported what they believe is the first documented death from a meat allergy that can be triggered by tick bites.

A 47-year-old New Jersey man died last year from alpha-gal syndrome, which in 2011 was first linked to bites from the Lone Star tick.

More than 100,000 people in the U.S. have become allergic to red meat since 2010 because of the syndrome, according to one estimate.

Some outside experts said it appears to be the first documented case of someone suffering a deadly alpha-gal reaction shortly after eating meat.

It's possible other deaths have happened but were assumed to be from other causes and not thoroughly investigated like this one was, said Joshua Benoit, a tick biologist at the University of Cincinnati.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson said the agency was not involved in this investigation and could not speak definitively about whether it's the first such death. The CDC recently released a free online training module to increase awareness and improve diagnosing, she added.

Dr. Scott Commins, a leading alpha-gal syndrome researcher at the University of North Carolina, called the death an “unmitigated tragedy.”

"Totally unnecessary and with increased awareness, this won’t happen again,” he said in an email.

The case report was published this week in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The lead author was the University of Virginia’s Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, who led the 2011 paper that first linked Lone Star tick bites to the meat allergy.

People with alpha-gal syndrome can experience symptoms including hives, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe stomach pain, difficulty breathing, dizziness and swelling of the lips, throat, tongue or eye lids. Unlike some other food allergies, which occur soon after eating, these reactions typically hit hours later.

The new report tells of a healthy airline pilot who in the summer of 2024 went on a camping trip with his wife and children. They had steak as part of a late supper. That was unusual — the man rarely ate meat.

He woke up at 2 a.m. with severe stomach pain, diarrhea and vomiting. He gradually felt better, went back to sleep, and the next morning he felt well enough to eat breakfast and walk 5 miles.

Two weeks later, back home in New Jersey, he went to a barbecue, where he ate a hamburger. About four hours later, he grew ill. A short time after that, his son found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. The son called paramedics, but the man was declared dead that night at a hospital.

The researchers said blood tests revealed evidence of alpha-gal syndrome. Proof that it came from a Lone Star tick is incomplete. The authors made the link based on a statement from the man's wife, who had said he had 12 or 13 “chigger” bites around his ankles earlier in the summer.

But the conclusion makes sense, as people in the eastern U.S. sometimes mistake the bites from mites with those from larval ticks, Commins said.

The number of cases of Alpha-gal syndrome is growing for a variety of reasons, including the Lone Star tick's expanding range, more people coming into contact with the ticks and more doctors learning about it and ordering tests for it.

It can take weeks or longer for infected people to develop the syndrome, which is named for the alpha-gal carbohydrate found in the tick’s saliva. Initial reactions to red meat may be milder but grow progressively more severe, Benoit said.

Some patients have only stomach symptoms, and the American Gastroenterological Association has advised that people with unexplained diarrhea, nausea and abdominal pain should be tested for the syndrome.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Supreme Court hears arguments over Trump's bid to limit birthright citizenship as he attends

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up one of the term’s most consequential cases, President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens, and he was in the courtroom on Wednesday for some of the arguments.

The justices are hearing Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.

Trump is the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation’s highest court. He spent just over an hour inside the courtroom, hearing arguments by the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer. He left shortly after Sauer wrapped up and the plaintiff was invited to present her case.

The case frames another test of Trump's assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president's favor — but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown.

Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. The justices previously struck down global tariffs Trump had imposed under an emergency powers law that had never been used that way.

Trump reacted furiously to the late February tariffs decision, saying he was ashamed of the justices who ruled against him and calling them unpatriotic.

He issued a preemptive broadside against the court on Sunday on his Truth Social platform. “Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America. It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES!,” the president wrote. “Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!”

Trump's order would upend the long-standing view that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, and federal law since 1940 confer citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

The 14th Amendment was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship, though the Citizenship Clause is written more broadly. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” it reads.

In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as illegal, or likely so, under the Constitution and federal law. The decisions have invoked the high court's 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, which held that the U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.

The Trump administration argues that the common view of citizenship is wrong, asserting that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are not entitled to citizenship.

The court should use the case to set straight “long-enduring misconceptions about the Constitution’s meaning,” wrote Sauer, the solicitor general.

No court has accepted that argument, and lawyers for pregnant women whose children would be affected by the order said the Supreme Court should not be the first to do so.

“We have the president of the United States trying to radically reinterpret the definition of American citizenship,” said Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director who is facing off against Sauer at the Supreme Court.

More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would be affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute.

While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright restrictions also would apply to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status.

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

Scientists document a death from a meat allergy tied to certain ticks

TECH

Scientists document a death from a meat allergy tied to certain ticks

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