Thomas Platts-Mills, MD, PhD
Thomas Platts-Mills, MD, emeritus professor of medicine in the Department of Medicine’s Asthma, Allergy and Immunology Division, was featured in more than 1,000 outlets nationally and internationally – including The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press, CNN.com, NPR and The Washington Post – highlighting the first death linked to a meat allergy spread by ticks.
The allergy is unusual because the reaction is delayed. Hours after unknowingly eating beef, pork, or lamb, people may suddenly feel ill—often waking up at night with symptoms that resemble food poisoning or a stomach bug rather than a typical allergy. Because so many people have potentially been sensitized to meat after tick bites but don’t know it, Dr. Platts-Mills and others have wondered whether there were unexplained deaths that were really severe reactions to a sugar found on mammalian cells, including those in red meat, called alpha-gal.
The case in question, reported in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, was exactly what Platts-Mills had feared and is believed to be the first recorded death caused by a red meat allergy.
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