LIO Launches Next-Generation Inpatient Mental Health Platform with Advanced Rounding, Monitoring, and Compliance Tools
WILMINGTON, Del., Aug. 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LIO today announced the launch of its new all-in-one platform for inpatient mental health services, featuring a compliance reporting suite, next generation digital observations, and adaptive monitoring modes. LIO, formerly Oxehealth, has expanded its footprint in the U.S. 500% since the start of 2025. LIO's enhanced platform and recent U.S. expansion will help solve some of the most critical issues impacting America's mental healthcare system.
'This platform launch marks a pivotal moment for inpatient mental health care,' said Todd Haedrich, CEO of LIO. 'LIO represents a fundamental evolution of our capabilities, addressing the most pressing challenges facing providers today and for the next decade while helping facilities enhance patient care and improve operational efficiency.'
LIO uses a unique, patented infrared system to remotely monitor patients, providing contactless measurement of sleep and vital signs through FDA-cleared software, along with additional insights into patient activity, all without disturbing patients. LIO allows clinicians to conduct observations and maintain patient safety wherever they are on the unit, including shared spaces and corridors. The platform also provides operational oversight capabilities for hospital leaders, ensuring care is delivered safely and consistently while meeting regulatory standards.
LIO builds on more than 15 years of close collaboration with providers across the globe and the large-scale deployment of its technology across hundreds of mental health facilities. Grounded in a robust, peer-reviewed evidence base, the platform has demonstrated measurable improvements in safety, quality, and efficiency — with results showing that a 100-bed facility using LIO can prevent more than 400 safety incidents each year, save 27,500 hours of staff time, and achieve approximately $700,000 in annual savings.
'As clinical providers, our job is to keep our patients safe and make sure they are receiving the best care possible,' said Mike Genovese, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Access TeleCare and LIO Board Member. 'LIO brings together everything we need in one platform — digital rounding, ambient monitoring and compliance reporting. It enables us to go beyond checking regulatory boxes; frontline staff and clinical leaders now have the insights to focus on what really matters: delivering exceptional patient care.'
Implementation of the new technology is quick and minimally disruptive, with a typical unit installation taking just 1-2 weeks.
LIO's roadmap includes the rollout of patient recognition capabilities for identity confirmation and enterprise-level analytics tools to help provider networks measure safety performance across sites, detect operational bottlenecks, and improve staff efficiency at scale.
'This is just the beginning,' added Haedrich. 'We are building for the future of mental health — and we're inviting providers, partners, and innovators to join us.'
About LIOLIO is the all-in-one platform for inpatient mental health. It brings together digital rounding, ambient monitoring and compliance reporting in a single, purpose-built solution – helping facilities run safe and high-performing services. With a fully contactless design that promotes patient comfort, and FDA-cleared software that meets the highest standards for clinical accuracy, LIO supports both frontline teams and hospital leaders to make informed, data-driven decisions. As a result, the platform reduces risk, enhances efficiency and strengthens adherence to regulatory standards – improving the experience of care for everyone involved. Trusted by hundreds of facilities in the US and UK, and backed by dozens of peer-reviewed studies, LIO fits seamlessly into the way hospitals work today while paving the way for tomorrow's advancements. For more information, visit www.liohealth.com.
Press Contact:Dori YoungLIO@crosscutstrategies.comSign in to access your portfolio
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Medscape
a minute ago
- Medscape
Aug 15 2025 This Week in Cardiology
Please note that the text below is not a full transcript and has not been copyedited. For more insight and commentary on these stories, subscribe to the This Week in Cardiology podcast , download the Medscape app or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast provider. This podcast is intended for healthcare professionals only. In This Week's Podcast For the week ending August 15, 2025, John Mandrola, MD, comments on the following topics: Big, new hypertension guidelines, ultraprocessed foods, coronary sinus reduction and evidence-based medicine, and more news on pulsed field ablation for atrial fibrillation. BP Meds Should Begin Promptly, New ACC/AHA Guidelines Say There are new AHA-led guidelines on hypertension out yesterday. The PDF is more than 100 pages. There's no way to hit every highlight; I will write a column on what I like and don't like next week. Here are some nuggets from the massive document that's only been out for a day. The writers provide a 'Top Take-Home messages' section. This I do not like, for the same reasons I don't like summary figures or infographics or 3-minute recap videos, no matter how funny the narrator may be. Medicine is about details, and these efforts to reduce a 100-page PDF into take-home messages is a bad idea. I do like the early and well-detailed emphasis on taking blood pressure (BP) properly. You know, feet on the floor, arm rested, not talking, etc. This is not done in many offices—which boggles my mind. The committee is strongly against cuffless BP devices. I did not know that — and it's good to know. There is a nice section on secondary hypertension; the two most common causes are primary aldosteronism and obstructive sleep apnea, both of which should be referred to specialty physicians. Other important causes of hypertension are alcohol or certain drugs, like NSAIDs. Much less common is renovascular disease, the authors write. The prevalence of primary aldosteronism is approximately 5% to 10% among individuals with stage 1 hypertension and 11% to 22% among individuals with stage 2 hypertension, which varies depending on the modality of testing and testing thresholds used to diagnose primary aldosteronism. The authors do not give short shrift to prevention or hypertension via lifestyle. I have little to say about it because a) it is obvious that diet, exercise, moderation of alcohol, and proper sleep is foundational for having good health — and good BP. One large change in this document is the treatment threshold using cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk estimation with the PREVENT score, which is new from AHA. I've covered PREVENT on previous podcasts. It's pretty controversial because it is felt to be a more accurate risk estimator, but — and this is a huge but — the PREVENT score results in fewer people reaching statin-starting threshold. But PREVENT features prominently in these hypertension guidelines, and the first is the choice to start therapy. BP > 140/90 is one criteria, regardless of comorbid conditions, but for BP >130/80 patients, initiation turns on the presence of CVD, diabetes, CKD, or PREVENT > 7.5%. PREVENT also features in goals. The aim is usually below 130/80 and push toward < 120 systolic when PREVENT is > 7.5%. So, there is a concern that since PREVENT is better calibrated than the pooled cohort equations (PCE), it might result in fewer people being started on treatment than the PCE. The risk of that seems lower, though, in hypertension than in statins, because with statins it is largely a risk-based decision, whereas in hypertension, there is also the marker of 140/90 or 130/80 with CVD, chronic kidney disease (CKD), and diabetes. The authors don't say this, but I will repeat myself: the main purpose and largest value of hypertension treatment comes in treating younger people early in life, so that they avoid stroke, kidney disease and heart disease, and live to old age. When they reach old age, they have won. Prevention now must be balanced against harm. The authors spend many words and academic-speak on treatment in the elderly. I would summarize it this way: Use Common Sense . An octogenarian is winning the game of life. Our job is to not mess things up with hypotension-induced broken hip or subdural hematoma. Nothing new comes in the choice of medication. It's thiazide-type diuretics, long-acting dihydropyridines, calcium channel blockers, and ACE inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blockers — all recommended as first-line therapy to prevent CVD. Note, no beta-blockers are listed as first line. One twist on imitation comes in section 5, where the authors recommend starting medical therapy for patients with stage 2 hypertension (>140/90) with two first-line meds of different classes in a single-pill combination — for adherence's sake. I used to be against this. I've changed. Because anything the decreases the work of being a patient, I am for. What's more, there is strong empirical evidence that combination pills increase adherence. Treatment goals follow the trials — namely SPRINT, which found advantages to BP 120/80 in patients with high CV risk. This is fine, again, more beneficial in 50- and 60-year-olds, so that they get to 90 without a stroke or myocardial infarction (MI). Recall that the ACCORD trial in patients with diabetes did not find benefit for the lower target. So, do aggressive targets not work for patients with diabetes? I would cite two lines of evidence suggesting that we also consider lower targets in patients with diabetes: one is that the recently published BPROAD trial found SPRINT-like benefits for 120 vs 140 target in 12,000 patients from China. I also love a paper by Luke Lafflin where he and Francis Alenghat created a SPRINT Trial score based not on inclusion criteria but actual clinical characteristics from Table 1 . And then applied it to patients in ACCORD... Boom: the SPRINT Trial Score was able to discriminate a subpopulation of patients with diabetes who were in SPRINT's data-rich zone and responded to intensive blood pressure control in the same way as SPRINT even though ACCORD-BP, on the whole, was a 'negative' trial. There are large sections on managing BP in stroke and intracranial hemorrhage as well as pregnancy, and since these are so often a subspecialty field that I am not involved in, I have won't say much about those. One section that I do want to comment on is Resistant Hypertension and Renal Denervation (RDN). I think the authors are quite sober about RDN. First, section 5.6 on resistant hypertension is very good. Confirm it. Look closely at adherence. I can't emphasize this enough, because throughout my years, I stopped counting how many times a patient with resistant hypertension becomes hypotensive in the hospital when put back on meds. Another nugget: use mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs) for resistant hypertension, and when they are poorly tolerated, use amiloride. This is a trick my nephrology friends taught me. The putative wonder drug finerenone is mentioned only once in the document, in the references, but I do have to wonder if there may be a role when spironolactone and eplerenone are poorly tolerated. As for RDN, the authors are cautious, and I highlight this passage: 'While some trials showed a small but significant reduction in 24-hour ambulatory systolic blood pressure by SBP by 3 to 5 mm Hg over the sham arm, others failed to reach their primary endpoint. Although broader indications are approved for the renal denervation devices by the FDA, given the relatively short duration of follow-up in clinical trials with modest BP-lowering effects and the absence of CVD outcome trials, renal denervation should not be considered as a curative therapy for hypertension or full replacement for antihypertensive drugs.' I think this is a good statement. I would have been stronger, but this is pretty strong. In the colored box where they give the recommendations a 2b level, they write that RDN may be reasonable if meds are not effective or intolerable. I really worry about the intolerable label. While there are some patients who poorly tolerate meds, I worry that if RDN earns reimbursement status from payers, there will be an epidemic of patients who cannot tolerate BP meds. I can even imagine direct-to-consumer ads creating a disease category of not tolerating BP meds. This could morph into the left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) situation where there are posters in lobbies of hospitals encourage patients to consider a nonmedical option for stroke prevention. I cannot be more clear: These sorts of things are a blemish on our profession. We shred our status as respected professionals when we promote procedures like LAAO and RDN. RDN trials were either negative, or found minimal differences in systolic blood pressure, over no more than a few months. Do not be fooled by any of the extension studies with RDN, because the nanosecond that a RDN trial unblinds patients, results are worthless — see the SYMPLICITY 1 and 2 trials. I will write these thoughts up in a formal column next week. Stay tuned for that. The American Heart Association has been busy. Also in Circulation is a long scientific statement on ultraprocessed foods and their association with cardiometabolic health. I am no nutrition expert. Perhaps you are not either. But we all know a few facts: Fact 1: Cardiometabolic health in the US is public health crisis of massive proportions. The saddest part is how it is has decimated the health of children—especially children in lower socioeconomic levels. Fact 2: Snack foods taste good, are easy to obtain, less expensive but have extremely poor nutritional quality. When there is junk food in break rooms in hospitals, it disappears. Donuts — gone! Fact 3: Many of these snack foods are ultraprocessed and filled with artificial dyes. Fact 4: My grandkids go to public schools that do not have gym class every day. Let me repeat that: They don't have gym class every day. How can kids concentrate on learning without exercise? I cannot do it. While I am not sure of his how to untangle the ultraprocessing and chemical components from the fact that most of the foods are full of empty calories, I think the medical profession must try to help sort out this public health crisis of terrible cardiometabolic health. There is low-hanging fruit. Excess calories in the form of carbohydrates is one of them. Not having enough focus on exercise is another. I am not sure food processing and artificial dye is the best initial target. I may be wrong, or just naive, but it strikes me how different other countries handle this problem. When you go to the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) meeting in Amsterdam, for instance, you look out the window of the conference center and see packs of lean Dutch kids riding their bikes to school. In the United States, you see lines of running cars at schools waiting to drive their kids home or drop them off. And therein lies a clue, I think. Coronary Sinus Reducer Shows Promise, With Caveats The coronary sinus reducer (CSR) is a balloon-expandable hourglass-shaped stent that when deployed causes narrowing of the coronary sinus. It increases coronary sinus pressure, which is believed to redistribute blood flow from nonischemic into ischemic myocardium. The device is not used or approved in the United States, so my colleagues here may not know about it. But a recently published meta-analysis in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions is still worth your time, from an evidence-based medicine (EBM) perspective. It's from the group led by Rasha Al-Lamee at Imperial College in London. They meta-analyzed the data for CSR to treat refractory angina. It stems from single-arm, unblinded studies and three sham-controlled trials. Recall that the CSR can relieve angina by two mechanisms: one is by the physical effects of directing blood flow to under perfused areas. The second way — and the authors of the meta-analysis call this contextual effects or non-treatment related phenomenon — this includes the placebo effect, the Hawthorne effect, the care setting effect, as well as things like confounding bias and natural history. These nontreatment related phenomena are the reason you tell patients who you just put in a stent or pacemaker that they will be hard to contain. The randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are a bit divergent: in general, they find reductions of angina symptoms but mostly do not show any objective differences in perfusion. The most recent and largest trial, also from the Imperial College group, the ORBITA-COSMIC trial of 50 patients (50% got CSR and 50% got a sham CSR) found no significant difference in stress myocardial blood flow, but they did find significant reduction in daily angina episodes. The main finding of the meta-analysis was that the single-arm studies showed much larger effects on reduction of angina than the pooled estimate from the 3 sham-controlled RCTs. For instance, 81% of patients in the non-blinded studies improve 1 functional class with CSR vs only 26% in the sham-controlled arm. And for the Seattle Angina Questionnaire domain measures of angina, the RCTs actually found no statistically significant differences, whereas all the domains were positive in the uncontrolled settings. I highlight this study, and Medscape Cardiology wisely has a news story on it because it so beautifully reveals the need for proper placebo-controlled trials in the procedural interventional field. If all we used were noncontrolled studies, we'd think the CSR was an amazing anti-anginal device. Yet it seems too obvious to say this, that doing procedures comes with the physiologic effect of the procedure plus all the other things, like expectation and changes in natural history and Hawthorne effect. Who, I ask, has not had post-AF ablation patient sing your praises for improving their quality of life after ablation only to be in AF during the visit? In the matter of the CSR, the Imperial College team are doing a larger RCT called COSIRA-II, which will hopefully further sort out the true placebo-resistant effect size of this procedure. It's an important thing to know because the implant procedure can have serious, albeit low incident, complications. It boggles my mind that medical scientists felt that we could measure quality-of-life (QoL) benefits in patients with tricuspid valve interventions without a proper placebo control. This is clear evidence that you need placebos every bit as much for procedures as you do for tablets. And placebo controls are not only for subjective endpoints. Recall that the SYMPLICITY III hypertension trial found that the excitement of blood pressure reductions from renal denervation were much more modest when compared against a sham control. I am going to report on another positive, albeit preliminary, study on pulsed field ablation (PFA) for atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation. You know that I am a slow-adopting medically conservative doctor. New things worry me. But it's been about a year with PFA during AF ablation. I have not once gone back to thermal ablation since adopting PFA. RCTs have shown similar efficacy and safety. You still can get tamponade and stroke. But the dreaded complications of death from atrioesophageal fistula have not occurred in PFA, because it is cardioselective. At my center, my partner and I have done at least 300 cases of PFA ablation and we feel that the efficacy is better. I emphasize feel . We do far fewer repeat procedures. Patients also have less post-procedure symptoms of inflammation. Less chest pain. Less heart failure episodes. This month, the group led by Professor Andrea Natale have published an interesting observational non-random comparison of anticoagulation after thermal and PFA ablation. It's nonrandom and we must be careful, but here is what they did, and found: About 400 patients had radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and 400 had PFA at multiple institutions. The authors did propensity matching to attempt to balance the characteristics. The good news is that the colleagues of Dr Natale tend to do AF ablation in the same way. Pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) and posterior wall isolation, with both RFA, and now PFA. So at least there is not much procedural variation. Half of each group (n= 200) each stopped the oral anticoagulant (OAC) after 1 month; the other 200 stopped after 2 months. So, they had four subgroups. There was no protocol. Stopping OAC was done for different reasons. The groups that stopped OAC after only 1 month were called Group 1. The groups that continued OAC for more than 2 months were called Group 2. The findings were dramatic, very dramatic in fact: in the Groups 1, stopping after one month, there were 0 strokes in the PFA group and 16 in the RFA group . In the Groups 2, those who continued OAC for more than 2 months, there were 2 stroke events in the PFA group vs 7 in the RFA group. What's more, AF recurrence occurred in 18% of the PFA group vs 27% in the RFA group. A statistically significant difference, which could have been a driver of differences in stroke events. While this is observational, and surely confounded, but it is prospective data finding that in at least 200 patients who stopped OAC 1 month after PFA, there were 0 strokes—whereas there were a lot of stroke events after stopping OAC after RFA. It suggests that perhaps there is less inflammation and/or endothelial disruption with PFA than with RFA. And, if this is confirmed in other studies, it would be yet another huge advantage to be able to stop OAC that quickly after AF ablation. I reiterate, though, that this observation needs further confirmation.
Associated Press
2 minutes ago
- Associated Press
KindlyMD Closes $200 Million Convertible Note Offering
Company Intends to Use Net Proceeds to Fund Purchase of Bitcoin and for General Corporate Purposes Follows the Completion of KindlyMD's Merger with Nakamoto to Form Institutional-Grade Bitcoin Treasury Vehicle SALT LAKE CITY, UT / ACCESS Newswire / August 15, 2025 / KindlyMD, Inc. (NASDAQ:NAKA) ('KindlyMD' or the 'Company'), a provider of integrated healthcare services and institutional-grade Bitcoin treasury vehicle, today announced that it has closed its previously announced offering of a senior secured convertible note in an aggregate principal amount of $200.0 million (the 'Convertible Note') in a private offering to YA II PN, Ltd., an investment fund managed by Yorkville Advisors ('YA II'). The closing of this Convertible Note offering follows the completion of KindlyMD's strategic combination with Nakamoto Holdings Inc. ('Nakamoto'), a Bitcoin-native holding company. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Convertible Note offering to purchase more Bitcoin, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes. The issuance of the Convertible Note further expands the Company's Bitcoin treasury strategy and adds to the $540 million of gross proceeds from a private placement in public equity ('PIPE Financing'), which closed concurrently with the Company's combination with Nakamoto. David Bailey, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of KindlyMD, said, 'The strong support we continue to receive from investors is validation of our pioneering Bitcoin treasury strategy. We are excited to leverage our enhanced balance sheet and differentiated go-to-market strategy to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible.' The Convertible Note bears interest at a rate of 0.00% per annum for the first two years, and 6.00% per annum for the third year and is payable on August 15, 2028, the third-year anniversary of the issuance date of the Convertible Debenture or earlier redemption date. The Convertible Note provides that YA II may convert all or any portion of the principal amount of the Convertible Note, together with any accrued and unpaid interest thereon, at an initial conversion price of $2.80, which is subject to adjustment and a floor price and maximum number of convertible shares of the Company's common stock. The Company also has the right to redeem the Convertible Note under certain circumstances. Advisors Cohen & Company Capital Markets ('CCM'), a division of Cohen & Company Securities, LLC served as lead financial advisor to Nakamoto and placement agent for the PIPE Financing. 10X Capital ('10X'), through its affiliated broker-dealer, also served as a financial advisor and placement agent. Reed Smith LLP and Holland & Hart LLP acted as legal advisor to KindlyMD. About KindlyMD KindlyMD® is a patient-first healthcare company integrating traditional primary care, pain management, behavioral health, and alternative therapies to provide comprehensive, whole-person care. In August 2025, KindlyMD completed its merger with Nakamoto Holdings Inc., a Bitcoin-native holding company, to establish a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury vehicle. This strategic combination unites KindlyMD's healthcare expertise with Nakamoto's vision of integrating Bitcoin into global capital markets, creating a diversified entity focused on both healthcare innovation and Bitcoin treasury management. For more information, please visit Forward-Looking Statements All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that that the Company expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements, as defined under U.S. federal securities laws, related to KindlyMD. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts and often include statements about our future operations, business strategies, plans, objectives, expectations, intentions, goals, projections, prospects, future events, or performance, as well as underlying assumptions. These statements-covering matters such as expectations, plans, strategic outlooks, financial projections, market conditions, regulatory environments, Bitcoin-related strategies, Bitcoin treasury management activities, and KindlyMD's anticipated holding of Bitcoin as part of its corporate treasury are inherently uncertain and involve numerous assumptions and risks. Forward-looking terms used may include, but are not limited to, 'estimate,' 'project,' 'predict,' 'believe,' 'expect,' 'anticipate,' 'potential,' 'create,' 'intend,' 'could,' 'would,' 'may,' 'plan,' 'will,' 'guidance,' 'look,' 'goal,' 'future,' 'build,' 'focus,' 'continue,' 'strive,' 'allow,' 'seek,' 'aim,' 'target,' or the negative of such terms or other variations thereof and words and terms of similar substance used in connection with any discussion of future plans, actions, or events identify forward-looking statements and similar expressions. However, the absence of these words does not mean that the statements are not forward-looking. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, descriptions of KindlyMD and its operations, strategies and plans, integration, debt levels and leverage ratio, capital expenditures, cash flows and anticipated uses thereof, including the purchase, custody, and potential sale or other use of Bitcoin, synergies, opportunities and anticipated future performance, including the management team and board of directors of KindlyMD. These statements may also relate to broader macroeconomic trends, industry developments, technology adoption, competitive positioning, market expansion, product launches, research and development efforts, acquisitions or dispositions, legal or regulatory developments, and other initiatives that could affect our future business performance. There are a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements included in this communication. These include risks relating to Bitcoin market volatility, cybersecurity and custody of digital assets, potential changes in laws or accounting standards relating to cryptocurrency, and regulatory developments affecting Bitcoin or other digital assets, as well as the risk that changes in KindlyMD's capital structure and governance could have adverse effects on the market value of its securities; the ability of KindlyMD to retain customers and retain and hire key personnel and maintain relationships with their suppliers and customers and on KindlyMD operating results and business generally; the risk that KindlyMD may be unable to reduce expenses or access financing or liquidity; the impact of any related economic downturn; the risk of changes in governmental regulations or enforcement practices; adverse impacts from geopolitical events, health crises, supply chain disruptions, changes to laws or accounting standards, cybersecurity threats or data breaches, intellectual property disputes, competitive pressures, or changes in consumer behavior; and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. All such factors are difficult to predict and are beyond KindlyMD's control, including those detailed in KindlyMD's Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10- Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and such other documents of KindlyMD filed, or to be filed, with the SEC that are or will be available on KindlyMD's website at and on the website of the SEC at All forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that KindlyMD believes to be reasonable but that may not prove to be accurate. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and KindlyMD does not undertake any obligation to correct or update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Nothing contained herein constitutes an offer to buy or sell securities of KindlyMD or any other party, nor does it constitute a solicitation of any proxy or vote. Contacts Media Carissa Felger / Sam Cohen Gasthalter & Co. Phone: (212) 257-4170 Email: [email protected] Investors Valter Pinto, Managing Director KCSA Strategic Communications Phone: (212) 896-1254 Email: [email protected] SOURCE: KindlyMD, Inc press release
CBS News
2 minutes ago
- CBS News
Meat, dairy allergies from tick bites "skyrocketing" on Martha's Vineyard, expert says
There's a new medical issue on Martha's Vineyard, and it's impacting the way people eat. It's known as "alpha-gal syndrome," and is not a tick-borne illness, but rather an allergy in response to a tick bite. "It's skyrocketing across the island," explained Patrick Roden-Reynolds, a biologist and tick researcher on Martha's Vineyard. The allergy can come in response to a bite from a Lone Star tick, which are common in the south but have recently shown up in large numbers on the Vineyard - due to a combination of climate and an unusually large deer population, experts say. "In the last 15 years, the Lone Star tick has gone from non-existent on the island to fully abundant and everywhere," Roden-Reynolds explained. "So, the way I've been explaining it, our public health burden with just deer ticks and Lyme disease was, you know, already here at our eyeballs, and now with the Lone Star tick and alpha-gal concerns, it's way above our head." The allergy can cause a range of symptoms up to serious anaphylaxis in response to eating or even being near mammal meat, dairy, and some mammal-related products inside medicine. "Alpha-gal syndrome has been so explosive on Martha's Vineyard that pretty much it comes up in every conversation that I have, ticks or alpha-gal syndrome, even without folks knowing what I do for work," explained Lea Hamner, an epidemiologist on the island. Hamner provided WBZ with a graph that shows the increase in positive allergy testing on the island - from 32 in 2021 to more than 500 positive tests in 2024. There is still a lot to learn about the allergy, Hamner says, though one thing is known: people can go into remission, and an exacerbating force that makes the allergy worse is an increase in tick bites. "One thing that does influence whether you have a shot at remission is whether you stop getting tick bites," Hamner said. "More tick bites can send you back into allergy or keep you there. And so that's one of the really key things, is preventing more tick bites." How to prevent tick bites? According to experts: The prevalence of the allergy has changed the way restaurants are doing business. "Restaurants, food trucks, and other food establishments are including alpha-gal-friendly menu items on their menu," Roden-Reynolds explained. "Alpha-gal is now a selection you can choose on your list of allergies if you're ordering takeout, too."
