Scientists Discover New Organ You Never Knew You Had!
Scientists have just discovered a new organ in the human body - well, kind of.
The Mesentery is a membrane which connects the small and large intestines to the abdominal cavity.
Previously, it was thought of as simple tissue - but now, scientists have classified it as an official organ.
Individual membranes or one whole organ?
Scientists knew about the mesentery for a long time - one of the first descriptions of it was actually created by none other than Leonardo da Vinci himself.
But they were never certain whether it consisted of individual membranes, or if the whole tissue was a connected organ.
The general opinion was that they were just fragmented structures, and no one really paid that much attention to them.
But now, researchers from the Limerick's Graduate Entry Medical School in Ireland have confirmed that it is indeed one complete structure.
"In the paper, which has been peer reviewed and assessed, we are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn’t been acknowledged as such to date. The anatomic description that had been laid down over 100 years of anatomy was incorrect. This organ is far from fragmented and complex. It is simply one continuous structure."-J Calvin Coffey, Limerick's Graduate Entry Medical School
Functions of the mesentery
The primary function of the mesentery is to connect the organs inside to the wall of the abdomen.
But it also transports blood and lymph to the gut.
There might be many more functions to it, but scientists are still in the process of studying them.
Coffey stated that it's important to look into the exact functions of the mesentery, because it might help to learn more about intestinal diseases and how they work or can be treated.“Now we have established anatomy and the structure. The next step is the function. If you understand the function you can identify abnormal function, and then you have disease.“Put them all together and you have the field of mesenteric science.”
-J Calvin Coffey, Limerick's Graduate Entry Medical School
Medical students are now already being taught that the mesentery is indeed classified as an organ inside the human body.
The world's most popular medical textbook, "Gray's Anatomy", has also been updated and now includes the new definition of the mesentery as an organ.You might think that scientists have studied the human body thoroughly by now, but now and then there's still something new to discover!
Images: 1, 2, 3, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4
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I wrote a TIL post about this a couple of days ago, but I believe you did a far more interesting post on it than I did. :)
Thank you for the compliment, I just checked out your post and it was definitely interesting as well!
Good to know, thanks!
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
Thank you for your comment, I appreciate taking the time!
My pleasure for your posts that are always of a high level!
I liked all this information in your post, congratulations.
Glad to hear that you enjoyed it!
cool! thx for sharing this info
Thank you for your feedback!
Nice, interesting post!
Thank you! :)
I'm sure in the future this discovery may help issues someone is dealing with that would have previously gone un/mis diagnosed.
Not convinced. It might be, but there is also something to be considered called publication bias. What if they would have discovered that there is no additional fancy function? No big news, maybe questions why the hell spending time on a tissue which is known since ages, even future funding would be at stake. But now they can make a huge fuzz about it. So there is a strong incentive for exxagerating simple facts and even twist and tweak findings to support a compelling message. This looks like a good example for this effect.
We had a patient that came into our practice a few years ago that had severe stomach pains and after what seemed like 100's of scans, and multiple "second opinions" - She found us and we decided to treat her as if it was Mesenteric Ischemia. Lo and behold, her symptoms began to improve. Come to find out, scarring on the inside of her abdomen after a hysterectomy many years prior, had caused insufficient bloodflow, and part of her mesentery membrane had began to die. Crazy stuff.
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The human body is full of wonders. Thanks for sharing! Didn't know about this!