Healthy Man Dies Hours After Eating Hamburger, Doctors Discover Unusual Reason Months Later

A New Jersey man died on the evening of September 3, 2024, hours after eating a hamburger at a backyard barbecue. Brian Waitzel was a 47-year-old JetBlue pilot with no known health conditions. His death was ruled sudden and unexplained, setting off a search for answers that would take his family well over a year to find.

The autopsy came back with no clear answers; its conclusion listed his death as sudden and unexplained. For Waitzel’s widow, Pieper, that uncertainty became its own kind of grief. “Everything changed in our life in 10 minutes, and to not know why,” she told The New York Times. “That was so upsetting.” For months, the family searched for answers while mourning a husband and father who had shown no signs of serious illness.

The answer, when it finally came, pointed to a tick-borne allergy to red meat that researchers had long suspected could be fatal, but had never been able to confirm. More than a year after Waitzel’s death, a team of doctors published findings in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, identifying his case as the first confirmed fatal instance of alpha-gal syndrome on record.

A Warning Sign That Came Weeks Before

The story begins a few weeks before the barbecue. In August 2024, the Waitzel family made their annual camping trip to Lake George in New York. That evening, the family had steak for dinner. Around four hours later, Brian woke up violently ill, making his way outside in the rain, doubled over with stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. Pieper sat with him through it, crying, with no idea what was wrong, according to The New York Times.

By morning, he felt completely fine. He joined his family on a five-mile hike. His wife recalled that he chalked it up to food poisoning, despite no one else at the campsite getting sick. He and Pieper briefly discussed whether he should see a doctor, but since he felt well again, they let it go. Two weeks later, he was dead.

At the barbecue on September 3, Waitzel ate a hamburger around 3 p.m., then returned home to mow the lawn. A neighbor who saw him outside later mentioned to his wife that he had looked puffy in the face. By 7:20 p.m., he was vomiting in the bathroom. By 7:37, he was unconscious. His son, who was alone in the house, reached his mother by phone. He told her he was scared.

How a Tick Bite Can Make Red Meat Deadly

Alpha-gal syndrome is triggered by bites from the Lone Star tick. The tick carries a sugar molecule called alpha-gal in its saliva, the same molecule found in red meat. In some people, the bite causes an immune overreaction, so that the next time they eat beef, pork, or lamb, their body responds as though it’s under attack. Symptoms typically appear several hours after eating, which can make the allergy difficult to identify.

Alpha-gal syndrome has been reported in growing numbers across the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2023 that between 96,000 and 450,000 people across the United States may have developed the allergy since 2010, with many unaware they have it. New Jersey alone reported more than 400 cases in 2024. Eastern Long Island recorded more than 3,700 suspected cases between 2017 and 2022, as lone star tick populations have grown across the region.

For Waitzel, the likely source of exposure was a run he had taken in a nearby state park earlier that spring. He came back from the run with about a dozen small bites clustered around his ankles, which he took to be chigger bites, a type of mite often confused with lone star tick larvae. In fact, lone star tick larvae are frequently mistaken for chiggers. Blood samples drawn after his death revealed elevated antibodies consistent with alpha-gal sensitization and signs of fatal anaphylactic shock.

A Family’s Search for Answers, and What Doctors Are Saying

It was a family friend and physician, Dr. Erin McFeely, who first pushed for answers. She visited Pieper Waitzel regularly after Brian’s death, and something about the circumstances kept nagging at her. She recalled asking what Brian had eaten on both occasions he fell ill. When a friend of the family mentioned alpha-gal syndrome, McFeely tracked down Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills at the University of Virginia, the allergist who played a leading role in the discovery of alpha-gal syndrome, as The New York Times reported.

Platts-Mills requested access to a blood sample retained from Waitzel’s autopsy. The results confirmed elevated enzyme levels consistent with anaphylaxis and a high concentration of alpha-gal antibodies. The findings were published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, with the family’s consent to publish. For Pieper Waitzel, the confirmation gave her an answer she had been searching for since the night her husband died. “It brings a lot of closure,” she said.

Platts-Mills had clear guidance for both patients and physicians. Severe abdominal pain appearing three to five hours after eating beef, pork, or lamb should be treated as a possible allergic emergency, not a stomach bug. He also urged anyone in tick-prone regions who experiences itchy bites lasting more than a week to consider getting tested. The lone star tick’s range, he noted, continues to expand alongside growing deer populations.