A tick known to cause meat and dairy allergies is spreading into the northern United States, health officials warn.
Previously found in the south, and almost completely eliminated in the Great Lakes and Northeast area, the lone star tick is making an unwelcome comeback. It is now found in over two dozen states. Summer is peak season for tick activity, and officials are already reporting a spike in bites.
Lone star ticks spike as Americans abandon land management
As with many modern problems blamed on climate change, from wildfires to water shortages, much of the true explanation lies in the decline of hands-on human management in recent decades.
Ilia Rochlin, Ph.D., an entomologist at Rutgers University’s Center for Vector Biology and Stony Brook University Department of Microbiology and Immunology, says changed land management practices allowed tick populations to flourish.
Ticks thrive in forests with heavy understory and leaf debris, which Native American tribes used to control with regular planned burns. The tick’s favored host animal is the white-tailed deer, which were once extensively hunted. Both of these management practices kept ticks in check.
“By the end of the 1600s and into the early 1700s, however, Native American populations had declined precipitously—in New Jersey, for example, by more than 95 percent—and they weren’t hunting deer or burning forests any longer,” Rochlin told Entomology Today.
As hunting became restricted and control burns fell out of favor in order to maintain lush European-style forest growth, ignoring traditional practices and generations of land management wisdom in the Americas, tick populations thrived across the northeast from New Jersey into upstate New York.
It wasn’t until logging boomed in the late 1800s and early 1900s that ticks began to disappear. As lumber companies cut back heavy forest growth in the East, deer populations and dense forest undergrowth were managed, and ticks along with them.
“With their habitat and main host both gone, lone star ticks retreated south into the areas where there were still forests and deer,” Rochlin said.
Now, logging is again decreasing, along with much of the farming culture in the northeast. Forests are unmanaged again, and ticks are back. As Rochlin explained, “they had the habitat and the host.”
“On Long Island, for instance, the forest nowadays is full of briars, such as Japanese barberry, and so dense that you can’t walk through it, but ticks love that kind of environment.”
Spotting a lone star tick
The lone star tick is difficult to distinguish from other tick species. They are faster moving and more aggressive. Females have a small white dot on their backs, males are smaller with black lines on their backs.
Where is the lone star tick’s territory?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports the tick has been found in more than two dozen states ranging from Texas to Nebraska, as far East as Maine, and down to Florida. In June, a lone star tick was found in Michigan.
Kansas is also seeing a rise in tick-related illnesses such as alpha-gal syndrome, with which lone star ticks are most commonly associated. Alpha-gal syndrome, or AGS, can cause a potentially deadly allergy to products made from mammals, including red meat and dairy products.
In 2023, a CDC study found most cases of AGS in Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia. Other states with AGS cases reported in the last five years included Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
Can a lone star tick bite really cause a meat and dairy allergy?
Over 110,000 suspected cases of AGS were diagnosed in the United States between 2010 and 2022. Health officials believe the real number of cases is far higher however, as AGS is not a nationally notifiable condition.
Alpha-gal is a “combination of a carbohydrate in a protein” found in various organism’s cells, but not in humans, according to Dr. Seth Mobley in an interview with KNWA. A person bit by a tick with alpha-gal can develop AGS.
Though lone star ticks are most likely to cause AGS, other ticks may also be associated with the disease.
Symptoms of alpha-gal syndrome (AGS)
Symptoms of AGS are similar to other allergic reactions such as shortness of breath, coughing, and difficulty breathing; itchy skin or hives; and swelling of the tongue, eyelids, throat, or lips.
Other symptoms may include heartburn, indigestion, diarrhea, lowered blood pressure, dizziness/faintness, stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting, according to the CDC.
In most AGS cases, the allergic reaction is not severe or life-threatening, though officials warned it can be. Anaphylaxis has occurred in some patients. Symptoms typically present within 2 to 6 hours of eating meat or dairy products.
“Essentially it’s an allergic reaction, so similar to like things you’d be allergic to, usually it’s not as bad as like a full anaphylactic reaction that you think about needing an EpiPen for or anything,” Dr. Mobley said.
Reducing tick populations in the U.S.
Rochlin believes that climate change will contribute to increased tick population, as ticks typically die off during the winter, and shorter winters will not be sufficient to cull them. The good news, he says, is that we can manage tick populations by managing land.
“We know that controlling the deer population, getting rid of invasive species, and getting back to the more natural cycle of periodic burning of the forest all work. So, now we have to have the political will to do it.”
