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Huge itchy red blotches blanketed her torso. A great weight seemed to be pressing on her chest, pushing air out of her lungs. She felt dizzy, a sure sign of plummeting blood pressure and a hallmark of anaphylaxis - the potentially fatal allergic reaction that had sent her to the emergency room half a dozen times since 2006. She quickly roused her husband, Joseph, who called the front desk. A clerk summoned an ambulance, and Quinn was whisked to a nearby emergency room.
Both Quinns were baffled: Linda hadn't eaten any of the foods doctors warned her to avoid, after being diagnosed with a food allergy. Only later would the retired couple discover that the culprit was something neither had imagined.
Linda Quinn's diagnosis, shared by a growing number of patients around the world, is upending long-held views of food allergies, which held that adults don't tend to develop allergies late in life. And yet these adults, some as old as 80, suddenly developed an allergy that sounded downright bizarre: They were allergic to meat.
