When Josh Hammann started having severe breathing problems in the spring of 2023, emergency room doctors were convinced he was having panic attacks.

They gave him medication to treat anxiety, but his wife, Megan, said that only made him sicker.

“Of course, that medication had alpha-gal in it,” she told The Independent.

Hammann, of Cole County, and other Missourians whose lives have been upended by alpha-gal syndrome, urged state lawmakers this week to advance a bill that would require the state to track cases and report them to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The potentially life-threatening tick-borne allergy causes people to have an immune response to mammal products — including red meat, dairy and a form of lactose in the anxiety pills Josh was prescribed. Symptoms vary from breathing problems to skin irritation and abdominal distress. And like Josh, many people with the emerging condition struggle to get a diagnosis.

The bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Matthew Overcast, would mandate diagnostic testing labs to report cases of the condition to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services within seven days of receiving a positive test. The department would be required to follow up on a random sample of cases and submit data to the federal government.

Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman is sponsoring an identical bill in the Senate.

Overcast, who presented a similar bill in 2025, emphasized to members of the House Health and Mental Health Committee that alpha-gal syndrome is “a public health crisis.”

“The last time I spoke to this committee, I only had three children [who] have it,” Overcast said. “Now my wife has it, and my aunt has it, and there are so many people, even in my church, that have it.”

Supporters of the bill said participating in national efforts to gather this data will help scientists study the disease and develop public health recommendations that could prevent its spread.

Ryan DeBoef, a lobbyist for the Alpha-Gal Alliance Action Fund, said that collecting data will help Missouri get federal funding to improve patient care and public awareness of alpha-gal syndrome.

The Centers for Disease Control is expected to open applications for grants of up to $1 million later this month to encourage knowledge-sharing among researchers and public health agencies, improve case tracking and educate health care providers about the condition.

“So it’s important that the states with a lot of alpha-gal are able to demonstrate that they have a lot of alpha-gal to receive that funding,” DeBoef said.

A 2023 report from the Centers for Disease Control indicated that more than 110,000 suspected cases of alpha-gal syndrome were identified between 2010 and 2022 — and that Missouri was in the center of the swath of the U.S. with the highest concentration of those cases.

Republican state Rep. Kent Haden of Mexico said alpha-gal is a “huge” problem and asked about the accuracy of diagnostic tests for the condition, questioning whether the bill “may be asking something that [the department] can’t do.”

Benjamin Casterline, a dermatologist and immunologist at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, cited data from Virginia that found the diagnostic tests to have 2% false negatives and 8% false positives.

“That’s a pretty good test,” Casterline said.

Overcast said the department has concerns about “the impact of this [bill] on their manpower.” The department estimated that they would need to hire four new staff, including two epidemiologists, to meet case tracking and reporting requirements, according to the fiscal note for the bill.

Lawmakers signaled support for the bill, which has 13 co-sponsors. Republican State Rep. Carolyn Caton of Blue Springs, one of the co-sponsors, suggested adding language to the bill that would include patients in case tracking only if they opt in.

Republican state Rep. Tony Harbison of Arcadia said collecting data on the condition’s prevalence in Missouri is “a no-brainer.”

“I see the spread of this, and this gets the conversation started toward a solution or prevention,” Harbison said.

Witnesses in support of the bill shared how alpha-gal syndrome disrupted their families’ routines and peace of mind, often requiring them to take on the burden of researching how to manage the condition.

Megan Hammann was diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome in 2025. She found a tick on her back after a four-wheeling trip.

“We weren’t even off the four-wheelers, so [the tick] was falling from the trees,” she said.

Within a month, she started developing hives.

Hammann said she’s worried her two kids will develop the condition.

“It’s like, how can you tell your kids not to go outside?” she said. “You want them to go outside. You want them to enjoy their childhood, but then you’re terrified. Something needs to be done, and I’m hoping that this is the start of it.”