Rare allergy prevents KZN woman from eating meat ever again

Rene Morcom reacted badly when she ate a steak and kidney pie.

Rene Morcom reacted badly when she ate a steak and kidney pie.

Published Oct 30, 2016

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Durban - When a meat-loving Pietermaritzburg woman took a bite of a steak and kidney pie, it caused her body to react in a life-threatening way.

But what Rene Morcom, 31, didn’t know is that she had developed a rare allergy which would prevent her from eating meat again.

After suffering several anaphylactic shocks from ingesting meat, she was diagnosed with alpha-gal in August.

Morcom is the first known case in KwaZulu-Natal. The allergy was identified in America in 2009 and was discovered to be transmitted to humans through the bite of the lone star tick. Alpha-gal is a carbohydrate component found in the blood of a mammal, but is not found in human blood.

“After biting into that pie, I started to develop tiny red spots all over the body. It eventually covered my entire body. I knew that this couldn’t be just an ordinary allergy so my husband rushed me to the hospital. I then spent four days in hospital and underwent a series of blood tests,” said Morcom.

Doctors found it hard to determine the cause of the allergy and Morcom went undiagnosed until she started to conduct her own research.

She experienced several other scares from eating meat, unaware, that this was the cause of the allergy.

“I wanted to find out what was wrong with me. This is when I established I could possibly have alpha-gal. I immediately wanted to do a blood test to confirm this but none of the labs in South Africa offered such a test,” said Morcom.

Eventually, her husband managed to track a lab in Joburg, which could do the test.

“My results came back positive. I got in touch with a Durban doctor who is an allergist and immunologist and he started to treat me, he seemed to know a lot about alpha-gal because this is something he had been researching.”

Dr Ahmed Manjra said Morcom, who lives on a smallholding in Chase Valley, was likely to have contracted alpha-gal because of her living conditions.

“This allergy is easily picked up by people who live on farms and smallholdings. The tick transfers the antigen from mammals via the blood, into humans. The patient then develops a reaction to meat. This is the first case we have seen in KZN. There are only two others heard of in South Africa.”

Morcom is now part of an international support group and plans to create a website to educate people on the allergy.

“I am sure there are many people suffering from the same thing but go undiagnosed because doctors don’t know much about it. I hope my story reaches as many as possible so if they experience similar symptoms, they can get the help they need.”

Morcom not only had to stop eating meat, she also had to stop using certain medication and products that contain animal by-products, to avoid a severe reaction.

Sunday Tribune

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