by Angelo DePalma, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
The lone star tick isn’t the only source of alpha-gal, a sugar linked to alpha-gal syndrome, also known as red meat allergy. Several ingredients used to manufacture foods, personal care products, medical devices and drugs — including vaccines — also contain alpha-gal.
Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a three-part series on red meat allergy, a serious, lifestyle-limiting disorder that causes individuals to experience mild-to-life-threatening allergic symptoms several hours after eating red meat. Also known as “alpha-gal syndrome,” meat allergy has no cure — the only “treatment” is to avoid certain meats and animal products. Read part 1 of the series here.
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Recent news reports on the recent rapid spread of alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), or red meat allergy, blamed the lone star tick. That’s because the tick’s saliva contains trace quantities of a sugar, alpha-gal, a known human irritant that many researchers and clinicians believe induces the dangerous allergic responses that are the hallmark of AGS.
But the lone star tick isn’t the only source of alpha-gal. Several ingredients containing alpha-gal are also used to manufacture foods, personal care products, medical devices and drugs — including vaccines.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides an informative, but incomplete list of vaccine ingredients containing alpha-gal, whose chemical name is galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose.
The CDC’s list includes bovine serum albumin, a protein produced from cow’s blood; gelatin, made from the bones and connective tissues of cows and pigs; magnesium stearate from numerous animal sources including red-meat animals; and glycerin, sourced from both animals and plants.
These substances, known as excipients, are added to many types of drug formulations to protect the more active ingredients from chemical and environmental degradation.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) categorizes glycerin, stearate and gelatin as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), but that designation applies only to foods, not to injected substances.
Serum albumin, the most abundant protein in mammalian blood, is not on the GRAS list but is consumed by ingesting beef and dairy products. Albumin is also used in many drugs and in beauty and personal care products.
Bovine serum albumin is itself an allergic irritant that can, along with other milk proteins, induce cow’s milk protein allergy in susceptible individuals. This is not the same as lactose intolerance, which results from the inability to break down milk sugars.
The Johns Hopkins excipients in vaccines list is interesting for the sheer number and chemical diversity of additives found in vaccines. Just focusing on the four ingredients the CDC says “may contain” alpha-gal, one finds 11 vaccines use bovine or calf serum, three contain glycerin, three contain stearate and nine use gelatin as an ingredient.
Two vaccines list both stearate and glycerin. An additional 22 vaccines contain various bovine extracts.
So could vaccines, in addition to tick bites, be a source of alpha-gal exposure leading to sensitization, and rarely, to symptomatic AGS?
That hinges on whether alpha-gal is actually present in one or more of the four vaccine components of interest mentioned above.
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