The tick menace is even worse than we thought.
These cases seem rare, but indicate that more people are at risk for the syndrome than currently assumed.
Alpha-gal is a sugar found in the muscles of most mammals, though importantly not humans.
An Ixodes scapularis tick searching for its next meal.© Jay Ondreicka via Shutterstock
We can normally tolerate the alpha-gal found in the meat we eat without issue.
And unlike other food allergies, symptoms might take hours, not minutes, to show up after exposure.
As a result, she switched to a vegetarian diet.
Three years later, she got a second tick bite.
Two years later, she got another bite from anI.pacificustick and once again experienced a rise in alpha-gal antibodies.
Importantly, the woman also reported no recent travel history to places where the lone star tick is found.
The findings might reflect a limited role for tick species other thanA.
amblyommaticks, the authors wrote in one paper.
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