Scientists have announced a case they believe to be the first recorded death caused by a meat allergy linked to tick bites.

A 47-year-old man from New Jersey passed away last year due to alpha-gal syndrome, a condition initially associated in 2011 with bites from the Lone Star tick.

An estimated 100,000 individuals in the United States have developed an allergy to red meat since 2010 as a result of this syndrome.

While the case prompted inquiries to federal health officials, responses were not immediately forthcoming. However, several external experts indicated this might be the first confirmed incident of a person experiencing a fatal alpha-gal reaction following meat consumption.

Joshua Benoit, a tick biologist at the University of Cincinnati, suggested that similar deaths might have occurred previously but were mistakenly attributed to other causes due to a lack of thorough investigation.

Dr. Scott Commins, a leading alpha-gal syndrome researcher at the University of North Carolina, called the death an “unmitigated tragedy.”

“Totally unnecessary and with increased awareness, this won’t happen again,” he said in an email.

The case report was published this week in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The lead author was the University of Virginia’s Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, who led the 2011 paper that first linked Lone Star tick bites to the meat allergy.

People with alpha-gal syndrome can experience symptoms including hives, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe stomach pain, difficulty breathing, dizziness and swelling of the lips, throat, tongue or eye lids. Unlike some other food allergies, which occur soon after eating, these reactions typically hit hours later.

The new report tells of a healthy airline pilot who in the summer of 2024 went on a camping trip with his wife and children. They had steak as part of a late supper. That was unusual — the man rarely ate meat.

He woke up at 2am with severe stomach pain, diarrhea and vomiting. He gradually felt better, went back to sleep, and the next morning he felt well enough to eat breakfast and walk 8km.

Two weeks later, back home in New Jersey, he went to a barbecue, where he ate a hamburger. About four hours later, he grew ill. A short time after that, his son found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. The son called paramedics, but the man was declared dead that night at a hospital.

The researchers said blood tests revealed evidence of alpha-gal syndrome. Proof that it came from a Lone Star tick is incomplete. The authors made the link based on a statement from the man’s wife, who had said he had 12 or 13 “chigger” bites around his ankles earlier in the summer.

But the conclusion makes sense, as people in the eastern US sometimes mistake the bites from mites with those from larval ticks, Commins said.

The number of cases of Alpha-gal syndrome is growing for a variety of reasons, including the Lone Star tick’s expanding range, more people coming into contact with the ticks and more doctors learning about it and ordering tests for it.

It can take weeks or longer for infected people to develop the syndrome, which is named for the alpha-gal carbohydrate found in the tick’s saliva. Initial reactions to red meat may be milder but grow progressively more severe, Benoit said.

Some patients have only stomach symptoms, and the American Gastroenterological Association has advised that people with unexplained diarrhea, nausea and abdominal pain should be tested for the syndrome.