A damaging immune response of the body to a substance, especially pollen, fur, a particular food, or dust, to which it has become hypersensitive refers to an allergy. However, in this matter a tick bite may have caused an allergic reaction to red meat. Catherine Roberts, Consumer Reports.org, reflects on the subject and how to protect yourself:

“Most of us worry about Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever when getting a tick bite. But now scientists say tick bites could give you an allergy to red meat.

That's because the lone star tick—most prevalent in the southeastern U.S.—has been shown to cause an allergy to a carbohydrate known as alpha-gal, which is found in red meat.

Image courtesy of: Twiztedminds

A new study in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology suggests that a meat allergy caused by ticks may be more common than previously known, and that this tick-induced allergy could explain some previously unexplained cases of severe allergic reactions.

The study looked at just one allergy clinic in Tennessee, and found that in cases where they were able to pinpoint the cause, the alpha-gal allergy was behind about a third of anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction) cases seen there, making it the most common known cause of reactions they treated.

Study author Jay Lieberman, M.D., associate professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and vice chair of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Food Allergy Committee, is quick to point out that these results do not mean that a third of severe allergic reactions nationwide are due to the effects of lone star tick bites, or that alpha-gal is the number one cause of anaphylaxis in the country.

But lone star ticks are spreading—their habitat now extends from the Southeast almost all the way to the Canadian border—which means more people may encounter them. Scientists who study the alpha-gal allergy estimated back in 2013 that more than 5,000 people in the Southeast U.S. alone could have the allergy.

And Princess Ogbogu, M.D., division director of allergy and immunology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (who wasn’t involved with the new study), says that from what she’s seen in her practice, plenty of these allergies have likely gone undiagnosed—in part due to a lack of awareness about the allergy among patients and even many doctors.

So just how concerned should you be about this allergy, which, in the U.S., is only caused by the bite of a lone star tick? We spoke with the study authors and other experts to find out.