Latest news with #UniversityOfSouthCarolina
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE My beautiful daughter was executed in her sleep. Now I've uncovered the truth about that night... it disgusts me
The man accused of fatally shooting a 22-year-old aspiring teacher at an off-campus fraternity house at the University of South Carolina was a career criminal who had a decades-long rap sheet. Logan Federico, of Waxhaw, North Carolina, was visiting friends in Columbia, South Carolina, for a last hurrah before they graduated and went their separate ways.
Daily Mail
02-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Experts sound alarm over a rise in a mysterious tick-borne illness spreading across America
If you've recently been bitten by a tick, you're at risk of a deadly new allergic condition. Alpha-Gal Syndrome, or AGS, causes a red meat allergy in humans. It is triggered when a person is bitten by a tick - most commonly the lone star tick - that carries the alpha-gal sugar. When the tick bites someone it injects the sugar into the person's body and causes the immune system to develop antibodies that attack it. Alpha-gal molecules are also found in the meat of most mammals, including pork, beef, venison and other red meats, as well as milk, gelatin or other animal products. When a person eats these foods, the body detects the alpha-gal and attacks it. This immune response can lead to a life-threatening allergic reaction. According to the CDC, approximately 110,000 cases have been documented since 2010, but because of underreporting or misdiagnoses, the true number could be as high as 450,000. And numbers are growing, experts warn, as temperatures rise and ticks survive milder winters. Health officials have said they are not aware of any confirmed deaths from AGS, but there is a risk if the allergic reaction becomes severe. Brandon Hollingsworth, a tick expert at the University of South Carolina, told The Guardian: 'We thought this thing was relatively rare 10 years ago but it's become more and more common and it's something I expect to continue to grow very rapidly.' Cases have been predominantly in southern, midwestern and mid-Atlantic regions of the US, but recent testing on human and tick samples suggests millions more Americans could be at risk because the tick that causes AGS is spreading to new geographical areas. Additionally, it's been found the condition is increasingly being passed on to humans by new species of ticks. Laura Harrington, a disease specialist at Cornell, added: 'With their adaptive nature and increasing temperatures, I don't see many limits to these ticks over time.' According to Allergen Insider, symptoms not only come from eating red meat but in more severe cases people reported that they experienced symptoms after just inhaling fumes of mammalian meat being cooked. AGS may not show symptoms immediately, which is why it is difficult to link the allergy to a tick bite. After consuming meat it can be between two to six hours before any symptoms appear. And they can vary widely, including hives or an itchy rash, nausea, vomiting, heartburn, diarrhea, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, dizziness, stomach pain and swelling of the lips, throat, tongue, or eyelids. The Lone Star Tick bite is largely responsible for the condition, and can be found in the southeastern US, but they are slowly spreading north with rising temperatures. In a recent case study, a 61-year-old woman experienced two major allergic reactions brought on by Alpha-Gal Syndrome after eating beef and pork tacos. During her first experience, 29 days after a tick bite, she developed hives and swelling but her mild symptoms resolved with over-the-counter allergy medication. But during her second episode a month later, her tongue swelled so much that she could not speak and was rushed to the hospital, as her blood pressure dropped dangerously low and heart rate increased rapidly. She was given epinephrine - the typical treatment for allergic reactions - but her symptoms worsened and her throat began to close. The woman was then given steroids and by the time she arrived at the hospital her condition began to improve. While she originally reported no significant event preceding either allergic reaction, in later interviews she said about a month before the first episode she had been bitten by a tick and was treated with an antibiotic. To prevent AGS, experts recommend checking for ticks after spending time outdoors. If you discover a tick bite, quickly remove the tick, disinfect the area, and monitor yourself for symptoms. They also stress the importance of increased surveillance of AGS and the types of ticks people acquire the condition from as ticks and states that historically have not posed the risk of AGS are increasingly being traced as the source. Hollingsworth said: 'We've seen an explosive increase in these ticks, which is a concern. I imagine alpha-gal will soon include the entire range of the tick, which could become the entire eastern half of the US as there's not much to stop them. 'It seems like an oddity now but we could end up with millions of people with an allergy to meat.'
CTV News
01-07-2025
- Sport
- CTV News
Raptors sign first-round pick Collin Murray-Boyles to rookie-scale contract
Collin Murray-Boyles poses for a photo with NBA commissioner Adam Silver after being selected ninth by the Toronto Raptors in the first round of the NBA basketball draft, Wednesday, June 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger) TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors signed first-round pick Collin Murray-Boyles to a rookie-scale contract, the team announced Tuesday. The six-foot-seven, 239-pound forward was the ninth overall pick in last week's NBA draft coming out of the University of South Carolina. Murray-Boyles averaged 16.8 points and 8.3 rebounds in 32 games en route to earning an All-Southeastern Conference second-team selection as a sophomore. He led the SEC in field-goal percentage (.586), scored 20-plus points in 12 games and had nine double-doubles for the Gamecocks. Toronto also signed guard Chucky Hepburn to a two-way contract Tuesday. Hepburn averaged 16.4 points and 5.8 assists in 34 games as a senior year at the University of Louisville in 2024-25. The six-foot-two, 190-pound Hepburn was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Defensive Player of the Year and earned All-ACC first team and all-defensive team honours. He led the ACC in steals per game with 2.4. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 1, 2025.
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Explosive increase' of ticks that cause meat allergy in US due to climate crisis
Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned. Lone star ticks have taken advantage of rising temperatures by the human-caused climate crisis to expand from their heartland in the south-east US to areas previously too cold for them, in recent years marching as far north as New York and even Maine, as well as pushing westwards. The ticks are known to be unusually aggressive and can provoke an allergy in bitten people whereby they cannot eat red meat without enduring a severe reaction, such as breaking out in hives and even the risk of heart attacks. The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now. 'We thought this thing was relatively rare 10 years ago but it's become more and more common and it's something I expect to continue to grow very rapidly,' said Brandon Hollingsworth, an expert at the University of South Carolina who has researched the tick's expansion. 'We've seen an explosive increase in these ticks, which is a concern. I imagine alpha-gal will soon include the entire range of the tick, which could become the entire eastern half of the US as there's not much to stop them. It seems like an oddity now but we could end up with millions of people with an allergy to meat.' The exact number of alpha-gal cases is unclear due to patchy data collection but it's likely to be a severe undercount as people may not link their allergic reaction to the tick bites. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said around 110,000 cases have been documented since 2010 but acknowledges the true number could be as high as 450,000. Cases will rise further as the ticks spread, aided by their adaptability to local conditions, according to Laura Harrington, an entomologist and disease specialist at Cornell University. 'With their adaptive nature and increasing temperatures, I don't see many limits to these ticks over time,' she said. Alpha-gal is a confounding condition because it doesn't cause an immediate allergic reaction, unlike a peanut allergy, with symptoms often appearing several hours after consuming meat. The syndrome is not caused by a pathogen but spurs an allergy to a sugar molecule found in mammals and an array of other things, from toothpaste to medical equipment. Researchers think the condition can wane over time but is also worsened by further tick bites. This leads to a confusing and fraught experience for the growing number of Americans with alpha-gal, who are now girding for another expected hot summer full of ticks. 'The ticks are rampant this year, I've pulled 10 ticks off me this season alone, it feels like they are uncontrollable at the moment,' said Heather O'Bryan, a horticulturist in Roanoke, Virginia, who has alpha-gal. 'They are so disgusting. I'm not afraid of a lot, but I'm afraid of ticks.' In 2019, O'Bryan suffered full body hives and struggled to breathe after eating a pork sausage. 'It was terrifying experience, I didn't know I had an allergy but it almost killed me,' she said. She now avoids products containing mammal-derived elements, such as certain toothpastes and even toilet paper, due to adverse reactions. Dairy, another mammalian product, is also off limits. 'I've learned what I can eat now, but I was so sad when I realized I couldn't have pizza again, I remember crying in front of a frozen pizza in the supermarket aisle,' she said. There is now an 'almost constant' stream of new members to the Facebook alpha-gal support groups that O'Bryan is part of, she said, with her region of Virginia now seemingly saturated by the condition. 'Everyone knows someone who has it, I talk a friend off a ledge once a month when they've been bitten because they are so afraid they have it and are freaking out,' she said. Lone star ticks are aggressive and can speedily follow a human target if they detect them. 'They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,' said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area. A particular horror is the prospect of brushing up against vegetation containing a massed ball of juvenile lone star ticks, know as a 'tick bomb', that can deliver thousands of tick bites. 'They are so tiny you can't see them but you have to take it seriously or you'll never get them off you,' said Forsyth, who now carries around a lint roller to remove such clusters. After being diagnosed with alpha-gal, Forsyth set up online resources about the condition to help spread awareness and advocate for better food labeling to include alpha-gal warnings. 'I get calls from doctors asking questions about this because they just don't know about it,' she said. 'I'm not a medical professional, so I just send them the research papers.' As the climate heats up, due to the burning of fossil fuels, ticks are able to shift to areas that are becoming agreeably warm for them. Growing numbers of deer, which host certain ticks, and sprawling housing development into natural habitats is also causing more interactions with ticks. 'Places where houses push up against habitats and parks where nature has regrown are where we are seeing cases,' said Hollingsworth. But much is still unknown, such as why lone star ticks, which have long been native to the US, suddenly started causing these allergic reactions. Symptoms can also be alarmingly varied – Forsyth said she rarely eats out now because of concerns of contamination in the food and even that alpha-gal could be carried to her airborne, via the steam of cooked meat. 'Some people are scared to leave the house, it's hard to avoid,' she said. 'Many people who get it are over 50, so the first symptom some of them have is a heart attack.' So how far can alpha-gal spread? Cases have been found in Europe and Australia, although in low numbers, while in the US it's assumed lone star ticks won't be able to shift west of the Rocky mountains. But other tick species might also be able to spread alpha-gal syndrome – a recent scientific paper found the western black legged tick and the black legged tick, also called the deer tick, could also cause the condition. Hanna Oltean, an epidemiologist at Washington state department of health, said it was 'very surprising' to find a case of alpha-gal in Washington state from a person bitten by a tick locally, suggesting the western black legged tick could be a culprit. 'The range is spreading and emerging in new areas so the risk is increasing over time,' Oltean said. 'Washington state is very far from the range and the risk remains very low here. But we don't know enough about the biology of how ticks spread the syndrome.' The spread of alpha-gal comes amid a barrage of disease threats from different ticks that are fanning out across a rapidly warming US. Powassan virus, which can kill people via an inflammation of the brain, is still rare but is growing, as is Babesia, a parasite that causes severe illnesses. Lyme disease, long a feature of the US north-east, is also burgeoning. 'We are dealing with a lot of serious tick-borne illnesses and discovering new ones all the time,' said Harrington. 'There's a tremendous urgency to confront this with new therapies but the problem is we are going backwards in terms of funding and support in the US. There have been cuts to the CDC and NIH (National Institutes of Health) which means there is decreasing support. It's a major concern.'
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Explosive increase' of ticks that cause meat allergy in US due to climate crisis
Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned. Lone star ticks have taken advantage of rising temperatures by the human-caused climate crisis to expand from their heartland in the south-east US to areas previously too cold for them, in recent years marching as far north as New York and even Maine, as well as pushing westwards. The ticks are known to be unusually aggressive and can provoke an allergy in bitten people whereby they cannot eat red meat without enduring a severe reaction, such as breaking out in hives and even the risk of heart attacks. The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now. 'We thought this thing was relatively rare 10 years ago but it's become more and more common and it's something I expect to continue to grow very rapidly,' said Brandon Hollingsworth, an expert at the University of South Carolina who has researched the tick's expansion. 'We've seen an explosive increase in these ticks, which is a concern. I imagine alpha-gal will soon include the entire range of the tick, which could become the entire eastern half of the US as there's not much to stop them. It seems like an oddity now but we could end up with millions of people with an allergy to meat.' The exact number of alpha-gal cases is unclear due to patchy data collection but it's likely to be a severe undercount as people may not link their allergic reaction to the tick bites. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said around 110,000 cases have been documented since 2010 but acknowledges the true number could be as high as 450,000. Cases will rise further as the ticks spread, aided by their adaptability to local conditions, according to Laura Harrington, an entomologist and disease specialist at Cornell University. 'With their adaptive nature and increasing temperatures, I don't see many limits to these ticks over time,' she said. Alpha-gal is a confounding condition because it doesn't cause an immediate allergic reaction, unlike a peanut allergy, with symptoms often appearing several hours after consuming meat. The syndrome is not caused by a pathogen but spurs an allergy to a sugar molecule found in mammals and an array of other things, from toothpaste to medical equipment. Researchers think the condition can wane over time but is also worsened by further tick bites. This leads to a confusing and fraught experience for the growing number of Americans with alpha-gal, who are now girding for another expected hot summer full of ticks. 'The ticks are rampant this year, I've pulled 10 ticks off me this season alone, it feels like they are uncontrollable at the moment,' said Heather O'Bryan, a horticulturist in Roanoke, Virginia, who has alpha-gal. 'They are so disgusting. I'm not afraid of a lot, but I'm afraid of ticks.' In 2019, O'Bryan suffered full body hives and struggled to breathe after eating a pork sausage. 'It was terrifying experience, I didn't know I had an allergy but it almost killed me,' she said. She now avoids products containing mammal-derived elements, such as certain toothpastes and even toilet paper, due to adverse reactions. Dairy, another mammalian product, is also off limits. 'I've learned what I can eat now, but I was so sad when I realized I couldn't have pizza again, I remember crying in front of a frozen pizza in the supermarket aisle,' she said. There is now an 'almost constant' stream of new members to the Facebook alpha-gal support groups that O'Bryan is part of, she said, with her region of Virginia now seemingly saturated by the condition. 'Everyone knows someone who has it, I talk a friend off a ledge once a month when they've been bitten because they are so afraid they have it and are freaking out,' she said. Lone star ticks are aggressive and can speedily follow a human target if they detect them. 'They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,' said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area. A particular horror is the prospect of brushing up against vegetation containing a massed ball of juvenile lone star ticks, know as a 'tick bomb', that can deliver thousands of tick bites. 'They are so tiny you can't see them but you have to take it seriously or you'll never get them off you,' said Forsyth, who now carries around a lint roller to remove such clusters. After being diagnosed with alpha-gal, Forsyth set up online resources about the condition to help spread awareness and advocate for better food labeling to include alpha-gal warnings. 'I get calls from doctors asking questions about this because they just don't know about it,' she said. 'I'm not a medical professional, so I just send them the research papers.' As the climate heats up, due to the burning of fossil fuels, ticks are able to shift to areas that are becoming agreeably warm for them. Growing numbers of deer, which host certain ticks, and sprawling housing development into natural habitats is also causing more interactions with ticks. 'Places where houses push up against habitats and parks where nature has regrown are where we are seeing cases,' said Hollingsworth. But much is still unknown, such as why lone star ticks, which have long been native to the US, suddenly started causing these allergic reactions. Symptoms can also be alarmingly varied – Forsyth said she rarely eats out now because of concerns of contamination in the food and even that alpha-gal could be carried to her airborne, via the steam of cooked meat. 'Some people are scared to leave the house, it's hard to avoid,' she said. 'Many people who get it are over 50, so the first symptom some of them have is a heart attack.' So how far can alpha-gal spread? Cases have been found in Europe and Australia, although in low numbers, while in the US it's assumed lone star ticks won't be able to shift west of the Rocky mountains. But other tick species might also be able to spread alpha-gal syndrome – a recent scientific paper found the western black legged tick and the black legged tick, also called the deer tick, could also cause the condition. Hanna Oltean, an epidemiologist at Washington state department of health, said it was 'very surprising' to find a case of alpha-gal in Washington state from a person bitten by a tick locally, suggesting the western black legged tick could be a culprit. 'The range is spreading and emerging in new areas so the risk is increasing over time,' Oltean said. 'Washington state is very far from the range and the risk remains very low here. But we don't know enough about the biology of how ticks spread the syndrome.' The spread of alpha-gal comes amid a barrage of disease threats from different ticks that are fanning out across a rapidly warming US. Powassan virus, which can kill people via an inflammation of the brain, is still rare but is growing, as is Babesia, a parasite that causes severe illnesses. Lyme disease, long a feature of the US north-east, is also burgeoning. 'We are dealing with a lot of serious tick-borne illnesses and discovering new ones all the time,' said Harrington. 'There's a tremendous urgency to confront this with new therapies but the problem is we are going backwards in terms of funding and support in the US. There have been cuts to the CDC and NIH (National Institutes of Health) which means there is decreasing support. It's a major concern.'
