A JetBlue pilot and father of three died just hours after enjoying a burger at a barbecue, with his family stunned to discover what had triggered a deadly allergy to red meat.
Brian Waitzel, 47, passed away in Wall Township, New Jersey, in September 2024 after experiencing severe stomach pains, but an autopsy later concluded the cause as ‘sudden unexplained death.’
‘Everything changed in our life in 10 minutes and to not know why. That was so upsetting,’ Waitzel’s wife, Pieper Waitzel, told the New York Times.
After a year of living in the unknown, a team of physicians and allergists published their findings in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, linking Waitzel’s death to a growing concern called alpha-gal syndrome.
Alpha-gal syndrome is transmitted by tick bites and triggers a sudden, severe allergy to red meat.
The day Pieper’s husband died started normally. Waitzel ate a hamburger at a barbecue around 3pm and went home to mow the lawn at his $1.7 million home.
Pieper left the house at 7pm, and Waitzel still had no symptoms until 20 minutes later when he fell violently ill, according to the medical journal’s findings.
Waitzel’s teenage son called his mom to tell her ‘dad is getting sick again,’ and then found him unconscious in the bathroom.
Brian Waitzel, 47, died after experiencing sudden and severe abdominal pain and vomiting, which medical professionals later deemed was from alpha-gal syndrome
Waitzel’s wife, Pieper, told the New York Times that her husband’s death left them wanting answers
Waitzel’s sudden and severe symptoms came just hours after he mowed the lawn and attended a barbecue
Their son, who just received CPR training for his job as a lifeguard, attempted to resuscitate his dad until paramedics arrived.
Emergency responders continued life-saving efforts for two hours, but the beloved father was declared dead at 10:22 pm, according to the medical journal’s report.
Waitzel’s death shocked and baffled his family, as he was in good health and received regular check-ups for his job as a pilot.
A family friend, Dr Erin McFeely, told the New York Times that something about Waitzel’s death ‘just didn’t add up.’
McFeely and Waitzel’s wife then connected that every time he became severely ill, he had eaten red meat earlier in the day.
Two weeks before Waitzel’s death, he was on a camping trip with his wife and ate a beef steak.
He woke up in the middle of the night with intense abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting.
Pieper told the New York Times that the episode was jarring. ‘It was raining, and he was rolling around on the tent platform in such pain, he couldn’t even tell me what was happening,’ she recalled.
Waitzel’s teenage son found him unconscious in the bathroom and performed CPR until paramedics arrived
Waitzel’s wife told the New York Times that her husband wasn’t experiencing symptoms when she left the house before his death
She tried to ask her husband if his head or his heart hurt, but he was in too much pain to answer.
All Pieper could do was sit next to him in tears and try to clean him up until the pain subsided.
Waitzel told one of his sons, ‘I thought I was going to die,’ according to the medical journal.
However, the next morning, the pilot was feeling better and even went on a five-mile hike. The couple figured he had food poisoning and didn’t make a doctor’s appointment because the symptoms subsided.
‘He bounced out of bed at 7 a.m. like nothing ever happened,’
Pieper then recalled that earlier in the year, her husband had gone jogging and returned with small bites around his ankles.
Waitzel is the first confirmed fatality of alpha-gal syndrome. His death has motivated researchers to spread awareness about the rare condition
She told researchers that the bites were from ‘chiggers,’ which often refer to Lone Star ticks in the eastern US.
Chiggers aren’t generally recognized as ticks, but they are an important cause of alpha-gal.
The syndrome is still relatively unknown, but researchers have found that it’s most commonly associated with a bite from a Lone Star tick.
Eerily, Waitzel and his wife had discussed alpha-gal previously after Pieper read an article about tick bites causing deadly red meat allergies.
‘I said to my husband “You should read this”,’ she told the Times. But the couple dismissed the illness as low risk, given their home sat inland from Jersey Shore beach towns where tick bites are more common.
Waitzel is the first confirmed fatality from alpha-gal, but researchers have warned that many people are likely unaware that they have the syndrome.
The research team that published the findings noted that more people will be exposed to the Lone Star tick as deer populations increase across multiple states.
Researchers urged better education on alpha-gal and noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documented a large number of physicians unaware of the syndrome.
