Mpox, your statins questions and tick-borne meat allergies

Mpox is spreading and it’s been classified a public health emergency by the World Health Organization. Presenter James Gallagher meets Professor Trudie Lang from the University of Oxford who has been working in the areas affected to discuss what it means for people in the countries it’s already reached and whether its spread can be stopped.

James also puts your questions on statins to Professor Naveed Sattar, and we hear the story of Simon who works in the outdoors as a landscape manager. He was having bouts of severe illness and was struggling to understand what was behind it. The answer? He’d had successive bites from ticks and was having symptoms of an allergic reaction when he was eating meat. He had alpha gal syndrome, commonly known as a meat allergy. We hear how it’s caused debilitating changes to his life.

We also hear from Consultant Immunologist Dr Rachael O’Brian who has been documenting the first case of alpha gal syndrome her team have been diagnosing at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey.

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Assistant Producer: Katie Tomsett
Editor: Holly Squire