Meat allergies from tick bites?

[Missourian]

Bad bite: A tick can make you allergic to red meat


Friday, August 8, 2014
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE ~ The Associated Press

A bug can turn you into a vegetarian, or at least make you swear off red meat. Doctors across the nation are seeing a surge of sudden meat allergies in people bitten by a certain kind of tick.

This bizarre problem was only discovered a few years ago but is growing as the ticks spread from the Southwest and the East to more parts of the United States. In some cases, eating a burger or a steak has landed people in the hospital with severe allergic reactions.



seMissourian.com: National News: Bad bite: A tick can make you allergic to red meat (08/08/14)

 

[R.C. Christian]

Those damn things are a plague. I'm not certain what purpose they maintain in the ecosystem.

 

[waltky]

Tick Genome Map Could Chart Ways to Stop Parasite...

First Tick Genome Map Could Chart Ways to Stop Parasite
March 23, 2016 — There are more than 900 species of ticks in the world, many of which carry serious diseases. In fact, ticks transmit a wider variety of pathogens than any other arthropod, causing thousands of human and animal deaths annually. But no one had thought to study them until about 10 years ago.

Now researchers, led by Purdue University entomologist Catherine Hill, have mapped the genome of Ixodes scapularis, the deer tick that is infamous for carrying Lyme Disease. With backing from the National Institutes of Health, Hill put together a tick research team of 93 scientists from 46 institutions around the world. Their findings are published in Nature Communications. "A good way to think about a genome-sequencing project is to relate it to a jigsaw puzzle," Hill explained. "So you break everything up like little pieces of DNA and then you have to put them back together again."

Ixodes scapularis, commonly known as the deer tick, transmits Lyme disease, the most common U.S. tick-borne illness.​

Among other things, the researchers identified a long list of genes that control smell and taste receptors, and discovered that ticks smell with their feet. The creatures climb blades of grass and hold their feet out until they sense a host to hop onto. With that information, scientists can design sprays and repellents to disrupt the tick’s abilities to find a host or perhaps even to mate and propagate.

Targeted pesticides and medicines

The researchers also determined that about 20 percent of the creature's genes are unique to ticks, which Hill says could lead to highly focused pesticides. "If we target these particular molecules we can make designer chemistries that are very specific or unique to the tick. We would be controlling only the tick and not affecting other organisms in the environment," she said. "And that means that we would be aiming to design more environmentally acceptable products for tick control."

Hill’s colleague, virologist Richard Kuhn, heads Purdue's Institute for Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Diseases. He sees the tick genome map as a gateway for the development of new drugs, noting that although ticks and humans use the same biological approach to disable viruses, ticks have developed immunity to many of the pathogens they carry. Kuhn suggests scientists could apply the same principles to human medicine. Knowledge of the Ixodes scapularis genome will not only help scientists develop vaccines for Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, and a form of encephalitis, it could also prevent future tick-related epidemics.

Preparing for the spread of ticks