By Kayla Yup and Jason Nark, The Philadelphia Inquirer

A 47-year-old man from New Jersey died within hours of eating a hamburger at a barbecue in the summer of 2024.

He had no major medical problems before, nor did his autopsy find a cause of death.

But several months later, researchers at the University of Virginia pieced together a diagnosis: severe anaphylaxis linked to alpha-gal syndrome. It was a tick-related red meat allergy the man didn’t know he had.

He would turn out to be the first documented death from anaphylaxis related to the red meat allergy, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: in Practice.

In most cases of alpha-gal syndrome, the culprit is a Lone Star tick, which can transmit a sugar molecule called alpha-gal t

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