East Coast Aussies Becoming Suddenly Allergic To Red Meat

The East Coast of Australia, land of sea and surf, is home to a new phenomenon. A growing number of residents are becoming allergic to red meat, all because of an increase in tick bites.

For vegetarian woman Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, finding out she had an allergy to red meat was definitely a surprise. For months she’d been having reactions to foods she’d been eating for years, like baked beans, nuts and yoghurt.

Doctors couldn’t figure it out, but Lenoir-Jourdan was determined to get to the bottom of it. Eventually she discovered it had been caused by a tick bite several months before that had resulted in an extreme local reaction.

”I tell you, I looked like the elephant man,” she said of the reaction. “My whole head swelled up. It was not normal. I went to a number of doctors and they all went, ‘Oh yeah, you’ll be alright’.”

Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan | source: news.com.au

What the doctors failed to mention was that a severe local reaction to a tick bite was a prime risk factor for developing an allergic to red meat, known as mammalian meat allergy. It’s a growing allergy that happens when the tick’s saliva changes a person’s immune system so they react to animal meat. This can include beef, lamb, pork and even some dairy and gelatine products.

“I found out that all the foods that were making me sick were either dairy or had meat derivatives in them. The nuts I was eating came from China, where they spray nuts with meat flavouring,” she said.

Cases Are Increasing

Lenoir-Jourdan is far from alone. There are well over 1000 cases of mammalian meat allergy (MMA) diagnosed in Sydney’s northern beaches alone. On the north shore MMA is now as prevalent in the population as peanut allergies, one of the most common allergies.

Clinical Associate Professor Sheryl van Nunen was the one who found the link between an allergy to red meat and Australian paralysis tick bites back in 2007. In those days it was a pretty rare instance to have someone diagnosed, but times have definitely changed.

“I’ve been saying for years “¦ if you have someone who has a middle of the night anaphylaxis, the diagnosis is mammalian meat allergy after tick bite until proven otherwise,” she said.

MMA is quite unlike traditional food allergies because there is a significantly delayed reaction between the ingestion of the food and the symptoms. Between 2-10 hours might pass before sufferers begin to notice hives, gastrointestinal pain or anaphylaxis. It’s even thought that there might be a higher number of MMA sufferers who simply don’t realise they have the condition, as their reaction symptoms are so mild.

Unfortunately despite the high number of reported cases there remains a level of ignorance in the community about the condition, which can result in a struggle towards diagnosis. Dr van Nunen says diagnosing MMA is as simple as a blood test, but she still says many patients who have encountered doctors who are unaware, or unwilling to accept, the connection.

Allergy Causes

So just how does a tick bite cause someone to develop an allergy to red meat? Well it comes down to who the tick bites first. Dr van Nunen thinks rising numbers of bandicoots are behind this particular outbreak in the Sydney area.

When a tick bites a bandicoot, they take with them a small amount of alpha-gal in the blood. This is passed on again from the tick to the person when the tick is pulled off the skin. Alpha-gal is a kind of sugar, and it’s this particular sugar that MMZ sufferers become allergic too.

At the moment there is no cure for MMA, but Dr van Nunen believes that people who are bitten by ticks but have no reaction might hold the key to figuring it out further down the track. For now prevention is the best option, and Dr van Nunen advises people use any kind of ether-containing spray (like Wart-Off) to freeze and kill the ticks where they are inside of pulling them out, which prevents them from passing on the alpha-gal.