A 47-year-old New Jersey man is the first person known to have died of a meat allergy caused by the bite of a tick, according to a published report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.”
That tick, the lone star tick, has been confirmed by researchers to be one of five tick species present on Staten Island.
The man, an airline pilot, reportedly died of alpha-gal syndrome — a red meat allergy caused by the bite of a lone star tick — after eating a hamburger. The lone star tick is present on Staten Island and lays eggs in large numbers, according to experts.
“Unfortunately, on Staten Island, you have the five ticks that we consider to be a human health risk,’’ Joellen Lampman, a school and turfgrass extension support specialist with the New York State Integrated Pest Management program, recently told SILive.com. The lone star tick is one of them — and it lays between 8,000 and 20,000 eggs a season and can be found in high numbers in the borough, Lampman said.
Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine publicly reported the man’s cause of death Wednesday after months of investigation. Their findings were published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.
The man’s death was initially a mystery, since medical examinations did not show evidence of a heart attack or other life-threatening issues, according to the report.
According to the researchers, the man started feeling sick four hours after eating a hamburger at a barbecue in September 2024. After mowing the lawn and reading the paper, he was found by his son hours later, unconscious on the bathroom floor and surrounded by vomit. An autopsy ruled that his death was sudden and unexplained.
Two weeks earlier, the man had become ill after eating a steak dinner on a camping trip with his wife and children.
“The tragedy is that they didn’t think of that episode as anaphylaxis, and therefore didn’t connect it to the beef at the time,” Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, an allergist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine who discovered alpha-gal syndrome and diagnosed the New Jersey man’s case, told NBC News.
Platts-Mills said he first learned of the man’s death in February from Dr. Erin McFeely, a New Jersey-based pediatrician and co-author of the new paper. McFeely and the New Jersey pilot had daughters in the same ballet class, he told the news outlet.
“Erin McFeely and the wife discussed what had happened,” Platts-Mills told NBC. “The two of them, talking, put it together and said, ‘Could this be that red meat thing?’”
Once he was connected with the man’s wife, Platts-Mills arranged for blood testing. A blood sample in April indicated that the man had experienced an allergic reaction, which didn’t show up on his autopsy.
“The level he had is basically only seen in fatal cases of anaphylaxis,” Platts-Mills said. “His level was 2,000. The highest level I’ve seen in practice of a person who survived is 100.”
Blood testing also revealed antibodies to a sugar called alpha-gal — which indicates a tickborne meat allergy, according to the medical report. Alpha-gal is found in the blood of cows, pigs, goats and deer. When ticks feed on these mammals, the sugar gets into their saliva and can be transmitted to humans through bites.
Most cases of the tick-borne meat allergy in the United States are linked to the lone star tick, scientists say.
Dr. Scott Commins, an allergy immunology specialist at the University of North Carolina Department of Medicine in Chapel Hill, told NBC News that the biggest risk factors for severe reactions are exercise and alcohol, which can increase the absorption of food allergens. The New Jersey pilot exercised and consumed a beer on the day of his death, according to the researchers.
“Food allergy deaths are really rare, and they usually happen in people that have underlying asthma or some other kind of medical condition. So it takes a perfect storm,” Commins told the news outlet.
The timing of a tick bite may matter, and a fresh bite is more of a risk, the outlet reported.
In the paper, the researchers wrote that alpha-gal syndrome has become a mounting threat as the lone star tick and its primary host — white-tailed deer — have migrated to new locations. That includes New York City.
Given the variety of tick species living in the borough, it’s no surprise the risk is greater and caution is urged by doctors, environmentalists and entomologists alike.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans have seen or removed a tick from themselves, someone else or a pet, according to research by the non-profit National Pest Management Association. And many have no idea they’ve been bitten.
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