How a Tick Bite Can Make You Allergic to Meat

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.3 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2025

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

A tick bite can trigger a rare allergy to red meat and animal products, forcing major lifestyle changes. Scientist Lee Haines joins host Rachel Feltman to break down what causes alpha-gal syndrome, why it’s spreading and how to spot the signs. Recommended Reading Red Meat Allergy Caused by Tick Bite Is Spreading—And Nearly Half of Doctors Don’t Know about It This Tick Can Make You Allergic to Meat, and It’s Spreading “A Red Meat Allergy from Tick Bites Is Spreading—And the Lone Star Tick Isn’t the Only Alpha-Gal Carrier to Worry About,” by Lee Rafuse Haines, in the Conversation. Published online August 5, 2025 Haines’s profile at the Conversation Haines’s profile at the University of Notre Dame’s Office of Media Relations E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check the show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:53.3	Imagine suddenly becoming allergic to a hamburger or a steak or bacon or even certain cosmetics and medications.
1:02.9	It's happening to a growing number of people across the U.S. and around the world, and the culprit is a tiny tick bite.
1:13.4	Alpha-gal syndrome is one of the strangest allergies we know of. It's a tick bite triggered sensitivity to a sugar molecule found
1:19.4	in the meat and fat of almost all non-human mammals. As our winters get warmer and tick populations
1:26.0	expand, more people are finding themselves
1:28.5	unable to enjoy their favorite foods, sometimes permanently.
1:33.2	Here to explain how a tick bite can completely change your dietary requirements and what
1:38.3	you can do to protect yourself is Lee Haynes, an associate research professor at the University
1:43.6	of Notre Dame. Thanks so much for
1:45.9	coming on to talk with us today. I am chuffed to be here. This is amazing. So let's start with a
1:52.5	basic question. What is alpha-gal syndrome and what causes it? So alpha-gal syndrome is a bizarre thing. I mean, it's taken many years to resolve what causes it,
2:04.2	but it is a tick-borne allergy to a sugar, which is very, very strange. The molecule, the sugar
2:11.5	molecule is called alpha-gal. That's why it's called alpha-gal syndrome. And this sugar is found primarily in red meats. So people
	...

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