Alpha-Gal Syndrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#141

Post by code_duck » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

whoisburbansky wrote: post #34

hirenj wrote: post #29

Guess what? It's glycotime again! Gal(ɑ1,3)Gal (Galili epitope) is a common epitope in most animals, but in primates we lost the activity of the gene (GGTA1) to synthesise it. Since we don't produce it any more, it's recognised as foreign by our body and not only causes rejection in xenotransplantation, but also this Alpha-Gal allergy. I'm not going to comment on the actual immune mechanisms that take place with deve…

Also fascinated by the fact that it's possible to lose tolerance to something you've ostensibly recognized as "okay" for most of your life, but I mostly wanted to just say that "problematic pandemic primed populations" got a hearty chuckle out of me.

All food allergies can work like this, as do with other immune malfunctions like celiac disease. Having the allergies/autoimmune sensitivity from birth is not as common as developing them later on. It can happen at any time in life! Most people tolerate the allergen for some period of time, and then their immune system’s response changes for reasons unknown.

I have allergies to shellfish and tree nuts (plus celiac disease - gluten) diagnosed/developed later in life, along with oral allergy syndrome which sometimes causes a painful reaction to a wide range of foods, but only sometimes (depends on immune state). While I’ve never had an anaphylactic reaction, my allergist prescribed an EpiPen, saying the reactions often increase in severity suddenly with no warning.

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#142

Post by MadAhab » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

DebtDeflation wrote: post #90

jagged-chisel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a complex interaction between the tick’s saliva and the human immune system that activates this allergy. My wife also has this condition and her reactions start in her stomach often resulting in vomiting and she feels fine after. Sometimes, the reaction results in a migraine headache. In her case, it’s not just beef, but any mammal. It seems that all mammals contain alpha gal except Old World monkeys (which i…

>There’s a complex interaction between the tick’s saliva and the human immune system that activates this allergy. "It's complicated" isn't really an explanation. Do you have any links that explain the actual interaction? I've been googling and can't find anything.

Tick saliva is meant to trick your body into not identifying it as a foreign object sucking your blood. So saliva, alpha-gal, and who knows what else is injected during the tick's feeding and that mixture is different than just eating food that when breaks down in digestion is turned into alpha gal.

It originates in a different place of your body (not from your gut) and has different components.

That's about the simplest I can explain the difference.

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#143

Post by brickmort » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

nahuel0x wrote: post #73

Sounds like a natural bio-weapon waiting to be used by a vegan extremist group.

It sounds like a joke, but this exact thing was discussed at the world science festival as a way to get people to stop eating red meat. https://twitter.com/spinte8/status/1407258675358715907

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#144

Post by setgree » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

selfsimilar wrote: post #124

setgree wrote: post #77

My dad got Alpha-Gal a few years back and is now severely allergic to beef; recently he ordered the impossible whopper at Burger King and got the same allergic reaction, suggesting either a mix-up or some serious contamination. He was fine but it's no joke, can cause anaphylaxis, etc. Side note, here's a free idea for a book: ecoterrorists conduct underground gain-of-function research on Alpha-Gal, making it transmit…

The novel idea reminds me a bit of the Greg Egan short story The Moral Virologist[0] in his collection Axiomatic. "John Shawcross is a fundamentalist Christian who is disappointed that safe sex has limited the spread of HIV/AIDS, which he considers to be God's punishment for sexual immorality; consequently, he becomes a virologist, so that he may create a new, more lethal virus." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The…

It's also kind of the plot of Dan Brown's 'Inferno', per wikipedia:

> Brooks explains that Zobrist was a geneticist who advocated the halting of humanity's growth, and that he... had supposedly developed a new biological plague that will cause infertility in a third of the worlds' population, in order to solve the problem of the world's impending overpopulation... ...The plague that Zobrist created is revealed to be a vector virus that randomly activates to employ DNA modification to cause sterility in one third of humans.

Close enough! it's hard to have an original idea

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#145

Post by twobuy » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

Wait, is pork "red" meat or not?

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#146

Post by MadAhab » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

twobuy wrote: post #145

Wait, is pork "red" meat or not?

Kinda in this case yes? Mammal meat contains alpha gal technically, "red meat" is just used to explain this allergy a little less pedantically.

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#147

Post by Diederich » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

jeffffff wrote: post #118

levi_n wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 years on, does she still have reactions if she eats beef? Does she (or maybe did she) have any reactions to other mammal proteins (milk, pork, etc)?

i seriously doubt that she would risk testing this out

I upvoted you, don't know why others have downvoted.

It took us both years before we even considered testing her reaction again because of how bad it was before.

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#148

Post by Zababa » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

brickmort wrote: post #143

nahuel0x wrote: post #73

Sounds like a natural bio-weapon waiting to be used by a vegan extremist group.

It sounds like a joke, but this exact thing was discussed at the world science festival as a way to get people to stop eating red meat. https://twitter.com/spinte8/status/1407258675358715907

How funny, there's a second video with an argument that I like to make as a joke/thought experiment: https://twitter.com/spinte8/status/1407263430030020610

What I usually says is something like this: if we're all equal no matter our physical differences, shouldn't we aim to have the smallest population possible? We would consume less food for the same output.

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#149

Post by MadAhab » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

EvilEy3 wrote: post #25

IntrepidWorm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed- the psychological and physical health benefits attributed by several studies to regular exposure to wooded and rural outdoor spaces is almost certainly worth the risk.

Worth the risk of being food impaired for life? Don't know about that.

You get used to diet modifications after a while, took me a year at least before I stopped 'mourning' my old diet so to speak. There's plenty of other delicious foods out there and it may go away eventually.

There's plenty of outdoor spaces that are treated for ticks prevention to enjoy too, to get the best of both worlds.

Re: Alpha-Gal Syndrome

#150

Post by KronisLV » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

DantesKite wrote: post #112

KronisLV wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good question. Here in Latvia they actually make any walk in long grass somewhat problematic, as well as letting animals like dogs inside for whatever reason. I actually got lyme disease a few years ago - had a period of pretty lethargic behaviour and noticeable joint pain. Blood work helped figure out its presence in my body and a course of antibiotics thankfully made me better. Now, i'm not precisely sure…

I think a better long-term solution that would have less cascading effects would be a cure for Lyme Diseases and the accompanying symptoms that follow years afterwards. Sorry you had to go through such a brutal disease. I've seen what it can do to people in the long-term and it can be devastating But it would requi.re such advanced medicine that doesn't exist today. Although I'm all for tick pest control (up to a cer…

Hey, if there are ways to vaccinate either the carriers of certain diseases, the people who'd get affected by them, or even cure those that have gotten ill, i think it's definitely worthwhile to research it further!

I guess that's how we ended up with vaccines for rabies being airdropped from planes, which sounds a bit silly, but is a really interesting approach to attempting to solve a similar problem for populations of wild animals: https://globalnews.ca/news/5782966/rabies-vaccine-bait-drop-...

Though i'm not entirely sure how viable doing something along those same lines would be for ticks. I do recall, however, reading about attempts to genetically alter mosquitoes to make them more resistant to malaria, so that its spread would be limited: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/enginee...

Maybe an approach like that could be viable for other types of diseases as well, without necessarily exterminating the populations of carriers, rather simply releasing modified specimens into the wild and letting them propagate the modifications through natural means.