Postdoctoral Research Associate Kansas State University Manhattan, Kansas
Tick bites are thought to be the cause of alpha-Gal syndrome (AGS, also known as red meat allergy), which is characterized by urticaria and anaphylaxis in response to dietary red meat. AGS, a chronic disorder for a life-time, is caused by an unusual occurrence of enhanced IgE antibody production against galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (aGal), which is a common glycan in mammalian tissues, with the exceptions of old word monkies and humans. A growing number of cases of AGS have been reported in the Southeast and Midwest regions of the United States (U.S.), with some 34,000 documented cases from 2010-2018, which also occur in South Korea. Numerous studies have strongly supported the notion that the bites of the lone star tick, Amblyomma amaricanum, are the cause of AGS in U.S. Interestingly, however, AGS occurs in only a small subgroup of the overall human population experiencing tick bites, indicating that either a subpopulation of ticks are the culprits of change or that a subpopulation of humans are vulnerable for development of IgE against aGal, causing AGS. We have demonstrated that the salivary glands (SG) of A. americanum contain aGal glycosylated protein, the presumed AGS sensitizer. A number of studies, including ours, have successfully expanded the scopes by using alpha-galactosyltransferase knockout mutant (aGT-KO) mice as the AGS model system.
