Ticks That Can Make People Severely Allergic To Meat Are Spreading In The U.S.But a few  hours after dinner Abley started itching like mad. He burst into hives his tongue swelled and he eventually passed out prompting his wife to call 911. At the hospital doctors determined he had gone into anaphylactic shock �a potentially deadly  allergic reaction.Fortunately Abley pulled through and he later met with an allergist to determine what had caused the terrifying episode. A series of tests revealed something strange: The hamburger had  triggered the reaction.  And it wasn t just the beef he was allergic to; it was practically all red meat. I ve always said I think it s karma says Abley now 73 a lifetime resident of  Virginia.   My family have been cattle ranchers for generations. Abley is one of at least 1500 people in the United States who suffer allergic reactions after eating meat and doctors interviewed by Popular Science  believe such cases are on the rise. But what s even more bizarre is the source of the  allergy.  The condition called alpha-gal allergy  is caused by the bite of a  Lone Star tick �a species traditionally  found mostly in the Southern United States but has spread  farther north in recent years.  And as the tick spreads more and more cases of meat allergies are being reported.  In one area of Long Island New York for example one doctor we spoke with has seen an  increase of 200 cases in the past three years �up from practically zero in 2011.The  connection between Lone Star ticks and meat allergies in America first came to light in  2008. At the time  Thomas Platts-Mills and Scott Commins both allergy specialists  at the University of Virginia Health System  were trying to understand why some of their patients had developed a  severe  allergic reactions to cetuximab  an intravenous cancer-fighting drug. The doctors eventually learned that Immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies in their patients  were  reacting with a sugar in the drug called alpha-gal. It was  peculiar since  nearly everyone produces these  antibodies  but not every patient  reacted poorly to the drug.Commins and Platts-Mills discovered these  strange reactions occurred in patients who all  hailed from  the same place: the southeastern United States. So a lab technician  Googled for  medical conditions that fit geographically with the allergy they were seeing.  Sure enough they found that Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever �a tickborne disease �affected the same areas. We went back to our patients and started asking them about ticks says Commins who along with Platts-Mills published their findings  in 2008  in  The New England Journal of Medicine.  It became clear over a series of months that this tick theory fit better than anything else we could find. Around the same time more and more healthy patients began reporting  meat allergies (one of them being Abley).  The  symptoms began  three to four hours after eating meals that contained beef or pork. Like the patients allergic to cetuximab these patients were also predominantly from the Southeast a  region crawling with ticks. It didn t take long for Platts-Mills and Commins to figure out the allergies were connected �and that the link was alpha-gal sugar.Alpha-gal is a major component of cetuximab but it s also found in a far more common  natural source: non-primate mammals such as pigs sheep and cows. Humans don t make the sugar and we all have some form of immune response to it. In fact alpha-gal is the main barrier preventing cross-species organ transplants; the sugar found in the animals  organ tissues triggers  rejection in humans.Yet most people have no biological reaction to eating livestock which makes the tickborne  meat allergy so surprising. Moreover the  patients of Commins and Platts-Mills  weren t born with the condition and they reportedly showed  symptoms much later in life �a unique trait for an allergy.So the doctors finally asked the  question they'd wanted to since discovering a potential connection: Are ticks actually causing this alpha-gal allergy? In a series of revealing experiments they sampled blood from their  patients with meat allergies  and combined them with various tick extracts. They discovered  that the IgE antibodies in their patients  blood samples binded to the Lone Star tick extract; meanwhile  the same antibodies from people without the meat allergy did not glom onto the tick proteins.  So in some way these tick bites could manipulate people s immune systems changing the IgE response.Despite identifying the vessel for the  mysterious meat allergy Commins and  Platts-Mills � say  many questions remain unanswered about the condition. How do does the tick induce this IgE response essentially breaking tolerance and why does it take four hours for symptoms to show? says Platts-Mills. One hypothesis  has to do with  fat absorption in the body which takes approximately two hours. Whatever the case he says   those two questions will keep us occupied for a long time.  It's also uncertain if all Lone Star ticks carry some factor that causes the condition or if only some do (as is the case with Lyme disease which is caused by a bacterium).As Commins and Platts-Mills struggle to understand the mechanisms behind this allergy the number of cases they re seeing is trending upward �and the allergy is no longer confined to the South. Dr. Erin McGintee an allergist on New York s Long Island who s worked with the UVA team has diagnosed  approximately 200 cases of this allergy in the area she works. She thinks wild turkeys may be to blame; they were reintroduced to Long Island a couple of years ago for hunting enthusiasts and the birds may have carried the Lone Star tick with them. A rising deer population may also explain the tick s spread as they are also big carriers of the  parasites.Whatever the cause McGintee expects to see more cases in the future:  I don t think it s a nationwide epidemic but as the Lone Star tick geographical distribution increases I think it s going to be a regional epidemic in many areas. Meanwhile many of the meat allergy sufferers have had to adjust to a new normal. Abley initially refused to accept his diagnosis experimenting with different meats to see if he could tolerate them. He tried pork and lamb but both caused reactions. He finally narrowed down his list of acceptable meats to chicken and seafood but all others he had to avoid consistently lest he wind up in the hospital.So he decided to become a vegetarian for the most part �not by choice but to save his life. Now whenever Abley and his wife go out to eat he must be very forthright with his waiters: His food can t contain red  meat of any kind or he could have another attack. Even foods like JELL-O are off the table because they contain gelatin which is made from meat byproducts. It s been really really difficult 'cause I am a meat eater says Abley.  Fortunately I live in an area where seafood is plentiful. But I love beef and I love pork so I  missed it for years.However there is a spot of good news for those who fall prey to the Lone Star tick s bite. The effects seem to be temporary  lasting a few months or a few years �as long as you don t get bit again. For Abley that s not  really an option given his location but he says the pros outweigh the cons. It s possible that if we move some place where I didn t get tick bites I could eventually get over this. But I live on a small farm in the middle of the woods in Surry County Virginia and I d rather have the allergy than leave that. 