The α-Gal syndrome – Investigating immune reactions to tick bites leading to inflammation and allergic sensitization

Allergic diseases cause a high societal and economic burden in industrialized and high-income countries. In particular, food allergies are on the rise since the last few decades. The alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), also known as red meat allergy, is a relatively newly recognized form of food allergy, described for the first time in 2009. Unlike the more ‘classical’ food allergies, symptoms are delayed and may appear several hours after ingestion of mammalian meat or dairy products. Thus patients do not easily establish a link between symptoms and ingestion of meat a few hours before. Awareness among health care practitioners is still low, which further hampers a timely clinical diagnosis. Another intriguing fact of AGS is that tick bites are at the origin of the disease. Individuals with occupational or recreational outdoor activities often experience frequent tick bites and they have a higher risk of developing AGS. There are still many questions regarding the etiology and the development of the disease.
In this project, we will investigate longitudinal immune responses in individuals bitten by a tick. We will collect blood samples and perform deep immune analyses using multi-omics and high-resolution techniques to elucidate how protective immune responses deviate into inflammatory allergic responses.
We will also identify the tick species and search for pathogens, thereby contributing to tick and disease surveillance in Luxembourg.