What specifically do you become allergic to, and how do you have to change your lifestyle when this happens?

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It’s generally an allergic response to eating mammal meat, specifically sugar molecules in the meat. Poultry is okay: You can still eat chicken, but pork and beef and almost certainly deer are going to elicit an allergic response. In some cases, dairy products as well, although that doesn’t seem as common. The change in lifestyle primarily involves avoiding those foods. There’s not really any treatment one can take. With any allergic response, antihistamines like Benadryl are always a good first response. And if there are signs of a more severe response like not being able to breathe, hives all over the body or itching all over the body, I’d go to the emergency room. In worst-case scenarios, some people may need to carry an EpiPen.

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What are the best ways to avoid getting alpha-gal?

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The best way to avoid alpha-gal is by not getting bitten by a tick. You can avoid getting bitten by not going to places where there are ticks, but sometimes we want to go recreate in the outdoors, go for a run in a state park, camp out or go hunting. In those cases, personal protection is really the key. You should wear protective clothing. You can do things like tuck your pant legs into your socks to keep ticks from getting in. You can also wear repellents that keep ticks off. Permethrin-treated clothing can be effective, as is good old-fashioned DEET.

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The final piece is to check for ticks, because once they crawl on you, they’ll look for a nice place to feed and tuck in. If you can get them off of you before they bite you, then you’ve avoided the problem. And even if you can get them off of you relatively soon after they have tucked in to feed, that can still help avoid a lot of disease transmission. Have a close friend help you check your body for ticks when you get back from being outdoors. Areas that you want to be particularly concerned with are places that are a little bit hard for you to see, like your back, under your hairline and along the back of your head, your groin region and armpits.

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How prevalent is the lone star tick in North Carolina, and are there other ticks that can transmit alpha-gal?

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The lone star tick is found throughout the state, and in the Piedmont region often makes up about 90% or more of the ticks we capture in field sampling, and around 65% of the ticks that people find on themselves or their pets.  That being said, we do suspect other ticks may be able to elicit the alpha-gal allergy, including the vector of Lyme disease (Ixodes scapularis).  However, the timing and distribution of the allergy is strongly suggestive of the lone star tick being very important.  

 

How common is it for alpha-gal to be found in lone star ticks?

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We don’t really know the carriage rate for lone star ticks, but of people who have been tested for this response, and they test it by looking for the antibodies in the blood to the alpha-gal sugar molecule, it’s about 30%, which is incredibly high. But remember, these are people who have symptoms already and then doctors are sending their blood out for testing. So, 30% of those people are positive. That still suggests there are a lot of cases of alpha-gal out there and that it is a significant problem.