Pilot died from meat allergy triggered by tick bite in ‘world first’

A man in the US died from a meat allergy that can be triggered by tick bites, scientist have reported.

It is thought to be the first documented death from the disease, called alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) – which was first linked to bites from the Lone Star tick in 2011.

The man, a 47-year-old pilot from New Jersey, died from the allergy last year after eating red meat.

His death came weeks after it’s thought he was bitten by ticks.

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

It’s possible there have been other deaths from AGS that were not thoroughly investigated, said Joshua Benoit, a tick biologist at the University of Cincinnati.

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 pilot’s death was discussed in a case report published this week in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The report describes how the healthy man went on a camping trip last summer with his wife and children.

They had steak as part of a late dinner, which was unusual for the man, who rarely ate meat.

He woke up at 2am with severe stomach pain, diarrhea and vomiting, butgradually felt better and went back to sleep.

The next morning he felt well enough to eat breakfast and walk five 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 and 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, although 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 her husband had 12 or 13 bites around his ankles earlier in the summer which they thought were from mites.

Dr. Scott Commins, a leading alpha-gal syndrome researcher at the University of North Caroline, said people in the eastern US sometimes mistake the bites from larval ticks with from with those mites.

He described the man’s death as an ‘unmitigated tragedy’.

‘Totally unnecessary and with increased awareness, this won’t happen again,’ he said.

The lead author of the study was Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills from the University of Virginia, who led the 2011 paper that first linked Lone Star tick bites to the meat allergy.

The number of cases of alpha-gal syndrome is growing for a variety of reasons, according to experts, 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.

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