Lack of Data about Red Meat Allergy in Iran

Food allergy is one of the major health problems in the world. Red meat allergy is the rare kind of food allergies in atopic people reported from some areas including, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and USA. The etiology of red meat allergy is attributed to the presence of an oligosaccharide named galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (“alpha-gal”) existed in some mammalian meat (beef, pork, lamb, etc.). After meat consumption by susceptible persons, the allergic reactions especially pruritus and even severe symptoms (death) may be occurred within 0.5-6 h (Commins et al., 2016; Mullins et al., 2012; Stewart et al., 2015). There is still lack of data about epidemiology of meat allergy in most areas of the world. To best of my knowledge, no published study has been carried out in this regard in Iran, yet. However, there are some com-plaints of allergic symptoms reported personally in a few Iranian people after eating lamb meat. Therefore, it is widely needed to do more attempts in order to monitoring and determination of incidence rate of red meat allergy and its risk factors in this country. Also, education of suspected allergic persons should be highlighted by clini-cians. Finally, like some other biosafety issues in Iran (Moghaddam and Hosseini, 2010), public participation is recommended for case of red meat allergy.