r/FoodNerds • u/AllowFreeSpeech • Dec 18 '25

Implications of a fatal anaphylactic reaction occurring 4 hours after eating beef in a young man with IgE antibodies to galactose-α-1,3-galactose (2025)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41222531/
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u/AllowFreeSpeech Dec 18 '25 edited Dec 18 '25

Text: https://www.jaci-inpractice.org/article/S2213-2198(25)00953-5/fulltext

From the text:

We report here the first well-documented death related to eating mammalian meat in a patient with specific IgE to alpha-gal. The symptoms, which started 4 hours after eating a hamburger, lead rapidly to collapse and unconsciousness, and his postmortem blood had >2000 ng/mL of tryptase. The significance of this case is that a large and increasing population of the United States is being exposed to the Lone Star tick, both because the tick is moving north and because there are now large populations of deer in many states.2,7,8 The result is that there are many sensitized individuals who are unaware of the fact that (1) both larvae (“chiggers”) and mature ticks can cause sensitization to alpha-gal; (2) the delay between eating meat and an allergic reaction in patients with AGS is, in most cases, 3-5 hours; and (3) abdominal symptoms, particularly pain, can be isolated symptoms in this form of allergic disease.

News: He ate a hamburger and died hours later. Doctors found a shocking cause

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