With alpha-gal syndrome increasingly plagueing the Island, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is taking on a first-of-its-kind study to understand more about the allergy, how it develops and who it affects.
By following a cohort of hundreds of Island residents who report being bitten by a lone star tick for two years after they’re exposed, hospital researchers are hoping to learn more about how the tick-borne mammalian food allergy presents in different patients — and why sometimes, it doesn’t present at all.
The study is affiliated with both Mass General Brigham and the hospital’s new tick clinic. It is being led by Mass General Brigham infectious disease expert Jacob Lemieux and Ellen McMahon, the chief of medicine and ambulatory medical director for Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
Hospital president and COO Claire Seguin said the hospital has been planning the study since last fall and recently registered its first participant.
“Very little information is known about alpha-gal syndrome, how it behaves, who is likely to get it…” Ms. Seguin told the Gazette this week. “Down the road, these studies will inform deeper studies on treatments and cures and vaccines and other things. But for now, we have to answer these basic questions first.”
First discovered and linked to the bite of a lone star tick in the early 2000s, alpha-gal has increasingly become a problem both on the Vineyard and in different communities across the United States, especially in the southeast. For many people, alpha-gal presents as an allergy to red meat and often dairy, reactions to which range from mild discomfort to anaphylaxis.
It’s a relatively new phenomenon on the Island. In 2020, the Island’s hospital ran only nine alpha-gal tests, two of which came back positive. In 2025, the number of positive tests climbed to 742. The hospital has recorded 572 positive tests so far in 2026.
Individuals, businesses and organizations are trying to adapt to the allergy’s explosion on the Vineyard. Restaurants and schools have changed their menus to accommodate the allergy, and Island health officials are urging the public to adopt tick-bite prevention measures. Some people have stopped spending as much time outside, and others are contemplating leaving the Island completely.
Little is still known about alpha-gal syndrome. Not everyone who sustains a lone star tick bite develops the allergy, and symptoms are highly variable among those who do. By following patients as soon as a lone star tick bites them — a kind of analysis no one has undertaken before — researchers may start to see patterns, Dr. McMahon said.
“We’re trying to pinpoint the key pieces that might make someone more susceptible,” she said.
To join the study, a patient needs to be 15 or older and have been bitten by a lone star tick no more than seven days prior. Participants who have previously been diagnosed with alpha-gal or other major food allergies are not allowed to participate.
Patients can join either by going to the hospital for tick bite care or by volunteering if they suspect exposure.
Then, researchers will see patients for two years, both at regular intervals and after suspected reactions or “trigger” events, to run tests and gather data.
“How are they doing with food? Is it impacting them socially or emotionally? What do their blood tests look like? Do they turn alpha-gal positive at some point? And what do their inflammatory markers look like?” Dr. McMahon said. “Hopefully, at the end of that two-year period, we’ll have some good information about who gets affected and why.”
The hospital will financially compensate patients for participating in the study.
“The more people that enroll in the study, the better information we’ll have,” Ms. Seguin said.
Ms. Seguin said that in September, the hospital will also undertake a point prevalence study to see how many people on the Vineyard have alpha-gal antibodies in their blood at a given point in time. The hospital will compare that data against data from Boston and Nantucket.
“We keep saying that it appears to be that there’s more alpha-gal syndrome on Martha’s Vineyard, but let’s show that,” she said.
Lea Hamner, the Island’s tick epidemiologist, told the Gazette that she’s “overjoyed” by the hospital’s new efforts. She said monitoring a cohort of patients with lone star tick exposure is an important step to learn more about alpha-gal.
“Really, this is the million-dollar question in alpha-gal syndrome right now: who gets it and why,” she wrote in an email. “Enrolling people right after a lone star tick bite and then following them over time — assessing their medical history, bite history, testing their antibody levels, and noting any change in symptoms — can help us figure out who is at higher risk for the allergy and who might fare better.”
Dr. McMahon is grateful to be working on the study and to the Island for pushing the bounds of alpha-gal knowledge.
“It’s a privilege,” she said.
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