this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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Is there a vaccine for the one that makes you allergic to meat?
No, because that's not an infectious disease like a virus or bacteria. It's an allergy your body develops to a specific carbohydrate (alpha gal) found in pretty much all mamallian meat except apes/humans. A specific chemical in the lone star tick saliva triggers it, so you just need to get bit. There's no virus or bacteria to vaccinate against.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_syndrome
There is a canine vaccine for lyme disease (different tick species). Human vaccine used to exist but was pulled from market, might be a new one soon though. There are unfortunately other diseases besides lyme disease though that ticks can carry, including rocket mountain spotted fever and anaplasmosis. And while lone star ticks (the meat allergy ones), don't tend to transmit lyme disease, they can transmit other diseases, unrelated to the meat allergy issues.
Why would you want to vaccinate alpha gal allergy? Alpha gal allergy is awesome!
There are worse diseases to catch from ticks
Ok? I'm not asking about those.
Ok? I was talking about those.
Great, and I asked a follow up question about a very specific one. If the reply to my question is not the answer then it's worthless. Thankfully someone else actually gave me the information I asked for instead of wasting everyone's time with useless replies.
What does meat allergy have to do with ticks?
Not the person you're replying to but you can get Alpha-gal Syndrome (causing potentially deadly allergies to red meat) from the lone star tick so I can see why it would be a natural follow up question to this discussion.
Oh okay, that's my bad then. I had never heard of that before.
All good I just figured you didn't know by your response so I thought I'd share if not just because it's interesting (and scary as hell).