A boy who was said to have died from asthma may have died of something else.
In 2022, 16-year-old Jeremy Webb died on a camping trip with his friends at MacMasters Beach, Australia. Jeremy and his pals had cooked sausages for dinner, and later that evening, the teenager started having breathing difficulties.
He rushed to seek help from an adult in a nearby caravan and his friends tried to resuscitate him when he collapsed, but sadly just 90 minutes later, Jeremy was pronounced dead at Gosford Hospital.
His cause of death was initially determined to be from asthma, but a coronial inquest is now looking into the theory that Jeremy died from something else.
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When Jeremy was just two, his mom said he was repeatedly bitten by ticks. After this he began having adverse reactions to red meat, sparking Myfanwy to think he had the tick-borne illness mammalian meat allergy.
"When I first suspected mammalian meat allergy, I did look into it, but there wasn't much information back then," she told ABC News Australia.
According to Jeremy's mother Myfanwy Webb, he would often get sick after eating dinner, but they could never work out why. He would vomit and struggle to breathe in the night to the point where his inhaler didn't work.
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Jeremy has now been posthumously diagnosed with the allergy, which may have contributed towards the teen's untimely death.
The condition, which is sometimes referred to as alpha-gal syndrome, is an allergy to red meat and other products that come from mammals and can be life-threatening, says Mayo Clinic. Someone may develop the allergy after being bitten by a tick.
If the condition is found to be tied to Jeremy's death, it's could be the first-ever in Australia.
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Maria Said, health strategy manager at Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia, told ABC: "Jeremy Webb's death [could be] the first death from mammalian meat allergy after eating meat that I'm aware of in Australia."
The recent coronial inquest into the teen's death is now probing whether Jeremy's final meal played a role in his death. So far, it's looked into the adequacy of the 16-year-old's medical treatment before his death, the role anaphylaxis played in his death, and whether his death could have been prevented by earlier detection, New York Post reports.
New South Wales Deputy State Coroner Carmel Forbes is expected to hand down her findings by the end of the year.
If you have experienced a bereavement and would like to speak with someone in confidence, contact The Compassionate Friends on (877) 969-0010.
Topics: Australia, Food and Drink, Health, News, Parenting
Niamh Shackleton