Alpha-gal syndrome, which can trigger a potentially fatal meat allergy, is surging across the U.S. Why?

What causes alpha-gal syndrome? 
It often begins with a bite from a lone star tick, which has a sugar molecule known as alpha-gal in its saliva. That molecule is found in the tissues of most mammals, but not humans, and normally causes no problems when people consume it in red meat. But when alpha-gal enters the bloodstream via a tick bite, the body produces anti­bodies to fight the intruder. In about 50% of people with those antibodies, a subsequent exposure to alpha-gal—such as by eating beef, lamb, pork, or venison—can spark an overactive immune response that causes hives, joint pain, vomiting, and severe abdominal cramps. “It was a terrifying experience,” said Roanoke, Va., resident Heather O’Bryan, who in 2019 found herself struggling to breathe after eating a pork sausage. “I didn’t know I had an allergy, but it almost killed me.” In extreme cases, alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) can cause anaphylactic shock and death. The U.S. confirmed its first alpha-gal death in November: a 47-year-old New Jersey airline pilot who collapsed in 2024, four hours after eating a burger at a barbecue. Thousands of people are now diagnosed with AGS each year, a remarkable number considering the syndrome was formally identified only in 2007. “Alpha-gal has gone from a medical curiosity to a major public health issue in just a decade,” said Vinay Jahagirdar, a gastroenterologist at Virginia Commonwealth University.

How many people have AGS? 
More than 110,000 suspected cases were identified from 2010 to 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which estimates that up to 450,000 people may be affected. Some doctors believe that’s an undercount. A study co-authored by Jahagirdar found a hundredfold increase in positive tests for alpha-gal antibodies between 2013 and 2024. Once clustered in the Southeast, the traditional habitat of the lone star tick, the disease is now common across the Northeast and Midwest and is surging along with other tick-borne conditions such as Lyme disease. Scientists say the warming climate has allowed lone star ticks to move north to areas where it was previously too cold for the species to thrive; the parasites have also been aided by the booming population of white-tailed deer, their primary host. Lone star ticks are especially aggressive and move three times as fast as the black-legged tick. “They will hunt you,” said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist and founder of the Alpha-Gal Alliance. “They are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor.”

What are the signs of infection?
There aren’t any, so most people don’t know they have AGS until they suffer an allergic reaction. But getting a diagnosis can be a long journey, both because many doctors aren’t familiar with alpha-gal and because symptoms can take up to six hours to appear after an exposure. Andrew Keenan, 58, a telecoms repairman in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., woke up with severe stomach cramps at 2 a.m. after a skirt-steak dinner. He then broke out in hives, and his blood pressure fell so low that “I sat up in bed and almost fainted.” Keenan, who was treated at the hospital for anaphylactic shock, now gets cramps and itching that can last days when he accidentally consumes alpha-gal, but reactions vary widely. Some are allergic to pork but not beef or vice versa; some react to dairy, some don’t. “Reactions are consistently inconsistent,” said Patrick Roden-Reynolds, a biologist who studies tick-borne diseases.

Why didn’t the thaw last? 
On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump pledged to undo Obama’s policies—promises that helped him win the votes of a majority of Cuban Americans in Florida. In office, he imposed a “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba and put the country back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Though President Joe Biden reversed that move in his last week in office in January 2025, Trump quickly reimposed it after returning to the White House last year with a newfound interest in Latin America, heavily influenced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a foreign policy hawk and the son of Cuban immigrants. Trump’s first target was Venezuelan autocrat Maduro, a close ally of Cuba, and many Cuban Americans saw that intervention as a step toward realizing Rubio’s desire to topple the island’s communist government. “If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned—at least a little bit,” Rubio warned hours after the January raid that captured Maduro.

Is there a treatment?  
No. The only way to manage the disease is to avoid alpha-gal—which is trickier than just ordering halibut instead of lamb chops at a restaurant. Food can easily be cross-contaminated, and aerosolized fat molecules from sizzling meat can cause a reaction, as can many items with mammal-derived ingredients: dairy products; foods with gelatin; medications made with glycerin; personal-care products that contain collagen or lanolin; even sugar, which is processed with animal-bone char. “I’m nervous about everything I eat,” said Jamie Ridgway, a Virginia Beach resident who landed in the ER after eating a marshmallow. Some sufferers now avoid restaurants and dinner invites. “You don’t want to be the social pariah asking people, ‘Is this vegan? What about that?’” said Massachusetts teacher Kate Sudarsky, 26. 

How do people cope with AGS? 
Support groups are growing in hard-hit areas. O’Bryan of Roanoke reports an “almost constant” stream of new members to the online groups she’s joined. In high-incidence states like Virginia—where up to 1 in 50 residents of some counties has AGS—a growing number of restaurants offer alpha-gal-free dishes. Some eateries “have gone completely alpha-gal free,” said Pitcairn Forsyth, who notes “a lot of chefs have”AGS. Many sufferers carry EpiPens to treat severe reactions; they include Missourian Annie Kittrell Poehlein, who at home now has “separate pots and pans and cutting boards. I have my own barbecue grill; we have two ovens.”

What are health authorities doing? 
A growing number of states track cases; 12 now mandate reporting of positive tests, including Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts. Health officials are trying to raise awareness of the condition and to educate people on how to avoid tick bites. Meanwhile, researchers are attempting to solve a number of mysteries, including the reason reactions vary so widely, why the allergy sometimes fades over time, and whether people who carry alpha-gal antibodies but show no visible allergic response might suffer unseen health effects, including digestive problems or coronary disease. Treatment breakthroughs may be on the way, but in the meantime, experts expect AGS to keep spreading. “It seems like an oddity now,” said Brandon Hollingsworth, a University of South Carolina epidemiologist, “but we could end up with millions of people with an allergy to meat.”

“Kash Patel has never been qualified to lead the FBI,” said Danielle Han in Jezebel, and The Atlantic just showed us “the gazillionth reason why.” In a damning report published last week, the magazine alleged that the bureau’s director suffers paranoid “freak-outs” about being fired, is often absent from work, and is “regularly too drunk to do his job.” Justice Department and White House sources told The Atlantic that Patel’s security detail has repeatedly struggled to wake the seemingly hungover FBI boss, forcing meetings and briefings to be rescheduled for later in the day. Last year, his detail even reportedly considered using SWAT-style “breaching equipment” because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. Some FBI and administration officials wonder if alcohol explains Patel’s repeated missteps—such as his sharing of inaccurate information about a suspect following the September murder of Charlie Kirk—and fear that he’s become a national security risk. Patel vehemently denies all the accusations and this week filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, calling its report “hit-piece lies.”

“Patel’s goal, of course, isn’t actually to win in court,” said William Kristol in The Bulwark. To do that, he’d have to prove not only that the claims in The Atlantic were false but also that the outlet knew they were so when it published them, “or at least didn’t care if they were true or not.” His real aim is to punish a publication that dared embarrass him with a costly nuisance suit “and to demonstrate to an audience of one, President Trump, that he’s fighting the lying lib media.” For now, Patel “still has support from the White House,” said Mike Pesca in his Substack newsletter. Trump appreciates his willingness to target perceived enemies—Patel vowed this week that arrests related to the 2020 election are “coming soon”—and to purge anyone who is “anything less than loyal to the president,” including scores of FBI agents over the past year.

It’s possible The Atlantic exposé will doom Patel, said Jeet Heer in The Nation. Trump, a teetotaler who watched his older brother drink himself to death, cannot abide substance abuse in his underlings. But whatever happens with Patel, the damage he’s wreaked “will outlive his tenure.” He has gutted FBI teams focused on terrorism, political corruption, and organized crime, and turned the bureau into “a dangerously right-wing” agency with the power to hurt the president’s political foes. “The real problem is not Patel’s alleged inebriation but the deep corruption of the most important law enforcement agency in the country.”

The Sopranos was a deeply personal work for David Chase, said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian. Its premise—Tony Soprano, a mob boss, goes into therapy to deal with the trauma caused by his emotionally abusive mother—was inspired by the writer and producer’s relationship with his own paranoid and narcissistic mother. “I portrayed her as she was,” says Chase, 80. Unlike Tony’s mom, Norma Chase didn’t try to have her son killed. “But in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, my mother said, ‘I’d rather see you dead than avoid the draft.’” How did he take that? He laughs. “Not well. I had to create a whole TV series to get over it.” Chase also had a tricky relationship with James Gandolfini, who played Tony. Gandolfini once called him Satan; he would sometimes go missing for days at a time during filming, struggling with the darkness of his character. Chase recalls “three or four” occasions when Gandolfini asked to meet because he was so unhappy, and they “talked and talked and talked.” But he says Gandolfini “never refused to do anything” and that his disruptive behavior was trivial compared with that of the lead actors on Northern Exposure. When he joined that show as a writer in 1993, Chase found an assistant director measuring the distance from the two stars’ trailers to the set, “because neither one wanted to have a longer walk than the other. Now that wasn’t a happy set.”