Single insect bite - and you are a vegetarian

One bite small at first glance, inconspicuous insect can turn even the biggest meat lovers in the green vegetarians.

Perhaps this sounds like something sci-Fi, but these strange cases were registered in the last few months in the USA.

Doctors record surge in symptoms of meat Allergy after being bitten by a certain species of mite, and most of all – more than 200 cases were recorded on long island.

This strange reaction was opened only a few years ago, but the spread of the tick continues to grow with the South-Western and Eastern States. In some cases, the infected people, after ingestion of a hamburger or steak, are in the hospital with severe allergic reactions.

Doctors are not immediately able to determine the nature of allergies, not to mention the patients, who quite reasonably wonder — as it may be allergic to the meat, if the whole life it is completely safe to use?

The cause of all these events is the Lone Star tick, named after Texas, famous for its meat barbecue. Currently the tick is found throughout the southern and Eastern parts of the United States.



When the tick bite into the circulatory system of a person gets unfamiliar disaccharide alpha-Gal (alpha-gal), which, however, is found in red meat, beef, pork, rabbit and some other products. That is, when a person is faced with this disaccharide in food, which subsequently is digested, it is quite harmless.

But when re-ingested, this compound the immune system immediately sends a signal, and being in a "state of readiness ", she begins to recognize the sugar introduced into the blood system and skin mites as a foreign substance and produces antibodies to fight them.

This leads to hyperimmune response, or simply put to allergies, every time the person eats red meat, and delivers the next portion of sugar in the body.

"Every week I see 2-3 cases of infection," says Dr. Scott commins of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, who along with his colleague Dr. Thomas Platts-mills, published the first article linking the disease with tick bites in 2011.

"One of the first infected became a forest hunter who had eaten meat all his life, but was hospitalised several times with allergic reactions after the last time eating meat in the food. More similar complaints began to come from people who spend a lot of time outdoors.

We suspected that the cause of the infection of all these people is somewhere in the forest area, and at first thought it might be squirrels. It took us some time to identify the culprit," he says, pointing to the mite.



Dr. Erin McGinty (Erin McGintee) Allergy specialist from Eastern long island, a region with a large number of different types of ticks, was observed by more than 200 cases for the last time. "This is a very unusual reaction. It goes against almost everything I ever knew as a allergist".

She said symptoms may not arise immediately, but only after about eight hours after eating meat, as the oligosaccharides, while in the bound state, released only a few hours after receiving food. Another feature is the cause of the reaction – sugar type of carbohydrate whereas most food allergies are caused by proteins.

An allergic reaction manifests itself as severe itching, redness, diarrhea, swelling of the tongue, anaphylactic shock.
Antihistamines usually help to relieve the itching, with more severe symptoms they are used in combination with adrenaline.

Doctors cannot yet answer whether the Allergy constant. Some patients over time, there are signs of decline of antibodies, although people who have had severe reactions, for obvious reasons, do not want to risk again and try the meat. Any products containing even a small amount of meat by-products, can cause infected people to have allergies.



materials nbcnewyork.com

Source: facepla.net