While health officials in most states across the nation are familiar with tick-borne diseases like Lyme Disease or anaplasmosis, a new tick on the block is raising eyebrows and calls for more research.
Amblyomma americanum, also known as the Lone Star Tick, the Northeastern Water Tick, or the Turkey Tick, is native to much of the Eastern U.S. and Mexico. Its bite is usually painless, and most often, it will go unnoticed until it is fully engorged with the victim’s blood.
The tick is known to carry a number of pathogenic bacteria, including Francisella tularensis and Rickettsia amblyommii. However, the bite of the Lone Star tick has been linked to a severe life-long allergy to red meats.
The allergy is a reaction to agents in the tick’s saliva. Interestingly, not everyone will develop an allergy to red meats, but for those that do, it can be quite severe.
Studies have shown that the allergy, called Alpha-gal allergy, is caused by a reaction to a sugar called galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (alpha-gal), in which the human body become overloaded with immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies trying to fight off the invasive allergen when red meat is ingested.
The allergy most often occurs in the central and southern United States, where the meat allergy rates are 32 percent higher than in other parts of the nation. There is still a lot to be learned about this particular tick-borne disease.
The allergy was first formally identified as originating from tick bites in a 2009 paper by Sheryl van Nunen.
So far, cases of this strange meat allergy have been reported in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and New York, with Long Island reporting at least 100 cases in the last year. This latest bit of news is just a reminder, again, that tick season this year will be particularly bad.
