2026-08-07
29 分钟This is In Conversation from Apple News.
I'm David Green, in for Shumita Basu.
Today, what to know about the tick-borne allergy spreading across the U.S.
It is peak tick season, the stretch from April to September
when tick activity spikes in huge swaths of the United States.
Right now, according to the CDC,
Americans are visiting emergency rooms for tick bites at the highest rate in nearly a decade.
And the most rapidly spreading tick-borne illness in the country is something called alpha-gal syndrome.
This is a condition that causes an often severe allergy to red meat and other animal products.
And it's primarily spread by a particularly aggressive species called the Lone Star Tick.
They will actively hunt people down.
That is New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger.
He recently reported on the rise of the Lone Star Tick and alpha-gal syndrome.
There have been reports of them actually crawling down from the dune grasses
and crossing the hot sand and getting onto beach blankets and biting people as they're sunbathing.
Lone Star ticks were once found mostly in the southeastern U.S.,
but they have been spreading, turning up as far west as Texas and as far north as Maine and Michigan.
And wherever they go, they bring alpha-gal along with them.
This syndrome can trigger a range of reactions after you eat meat or dairy,
from hives and indigestion to full-on anaphylaxis.