To those who don’t consider the summer complete without devouring racks of sizzling barbecued pork ribs or slabs of charred beef steaks, experts have an odd but true warning: Watch out for the so-called lone star tick.
Amblyomma Americanum, a parasitic species distinguished by a prominent light or white dot on the females’ abdomen, has spread across the southeastern United States and is showing up in increasing numbers in the DMV (the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia), the Washington Post reported.
The bite of the lone star tick is concerning, the newspaper reported, “because it can produce a severe food allergy in people known as alpha-gal syndrome, which is an allergy to red meat.” [By the way, “alpha gal” is not a reference to a feminist super hero but to a common blood sugar, alpha galactose]. As the news article added: