RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- A once-rare disease that causes a person to develop a severe allergy to red meat is seeing an "explosive rise" across America, including in Virginia.

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) report that more and more people throughout the United States are contracting alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a tick-borne disease. Specifically, they found that there has been a 100-fold increase in cases between 2013 and 2024.

Data shows that this was driven in part by a recent spike in cases, with AGS' incidence rate rising from 23.46% to 94.06% between 2021-22 and 2023-24, respectively.

“Alpha-gal syndrome has gone from a medical curiosity to a major public health issue in just a decade,” said Vinay Jahagirdar, M.D., the study’s co-author, in an Oct. 30 press relea

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