Researchers Develop Possible Treatment for Red Meat Allergy Caused by Ticks

A possible treatment for alpha-gal syndrome, the dreaded red-meat allergy caused by lone star tick bites, may be on the horizon.

According to woodtv.com, biomedical engineers from the University of Michigan may have figured out how to stop the effects of alpha-gal syndrome.

The scientific journal “Frontiers in Allergy” recently published a study explaining that the key is negating the effects of a sugar that is commonly found in meat and in the lone star tick’s spit. If the tick transmits that sugar during a bite, the human body will associate that sugar with an infection and, when it is seen again, trigger an immune response causing the allergic reaction.

The Michigan researchers developed a group of nanoparticles to “retrain the immune system to ignore the sugar.”

A team at the University of Virginia then used those nanoparticles in an experiment with mice to determine whether they worked. After two treatments of the nanoparticles, 12 mice were exposed to ticks to trigger an alpha-gal allergic response. Ten of the 12 mice showed a “reduced immune response.”

“There is the potential here for a platform technology that can be used to address a variety of food-allergic responses,” Lonnie Shea, a professor of biomedical engineering at U-M and a co-corresponding author on the study, said in a university blog post.

Loren Erickson, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, is encouraged by the results and calls for more studies.

“While these findings highlight the first therapeutic potential of nanoparticles to treat red meat allergy, we’re calling for further studies to better understand the implications and the long-lasting effects of nanoparticle treatment,” Erickson said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 450,000 Americans have developed alpha-gal, including more than 100,000 people since 2010. Those suffering from alpha-gal syndrome may experience a variety of symptoms, ranging from hives and nausea to difficulty breathing, dizziness and swelling in the lips, throat and tongue.