from the and-you've-had-it-all-along dept.
Your body now has an extra organ. Researchers have classified a brand-new organ inside our bodies, one that's been hiding in plain sight in our digestive system this whole time.
Although we now know about the structure of this new organ, its function is still poorly understood, and studying it could be the key to better understanding and treatment of abdominal and digestive disease. Known as the mesentery, the new organ is found in our digestive systems, and was long thought to be made up of fragmented, separate structures. But recent research has shown that it's actually one, continuous organ.
The evidence for the organ's reclassification is now published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.
"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," said J Calvin Coffey, a researcher from the University Hospital Limerick in Ireland, who first discovered that the mesentery was an organ.
"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."
Thanks to the new research, as of last year, medical students started being taught that the mesentery is a distinct organ.
The world's best-known series of medical textbooks, Gray's Anatomy , has even been updated to include the new definition.
So what is the mesentery? It's a double fold of peritoneum - the lining of the abdominal cavity - that attaches our intestine to the wall of our abdomen, and keeps everything locked in place.
[...] Over the past four years, [researchers] gathered further evidence that the mesentery should actually be classified as its own distinct organ, and the latest paper makes it official. And while that doesn't change the structure that's been inside our bodies all along, with the reclassification comes a whole new field of medical science that could improve our health outcomes.
[...] It just goes to show that no matter how advanced science becomes, there's always more to learn and discover, even within our own bodies.
The research has been published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MrGuy on Thursday January 05 2017, @12:18AM
Are we allowed to talk about it? Is it Top Secret?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 05 2017, @02:02AM
I'm not worried about people talking about it. I'm more concerned that the upgrade is going to cost us more. Is congress going to pass a mesentery tax, or something? Are the insurance companies going to write mesentery policies? Where does an extra organ lead to in our society? Maybe we can get the powers that be to grandfather this thing in? Let the grandchildren pay their mesentery taxes, I should be exempt!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday January 05 2017, @03:29AM
Goddamitsomuch, my first thought as well. Well played sir, well played.
Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 05 2017, @07:03AM
I have a peeve about this kind of wording. The organ is definitely not brand new. It is newly discovered. The wording makes it sound like it was created just the other day.
It's the same with Planet 9. New planet? No way! Newly hypothesized, yes, but definitely not new. Assuming it exists, it's very likely been part of the solar system with the other 8 major planets since the beginnings of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago.
Then there's calling the Americas the "New World", as if North and South America didn't exist until Columbus discovered them.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 05 2017, @06:54PM
Prove it. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by RedIsNotGreen on Friday January 06 2017, @12:46AM
Not according to quantum theory...
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday January 05 2017, @12:29AM
Okay, so the mesentery has changed from a structure to an organ as viewed in anatomy.
Structure, matrix, or organ, without it our guts would be disorganized and shifty.
(Score: 1) by shanen on Thursday January 05 2017, @04:12AM
I don't like the click-bait headline. The reality is more like a promotion to "organ" status for a group of tissues that were already well known. Reminds me of the demotion of Pluto from "planet" status. Nothing really changed except the branding.
Or maybe it's better to consider the other side of relabeling, something that really has changed completely, but which insists on using the same branding? Trump's GOP, for instance?
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:01AM
The new organ is my fat fucking dick!
(Score: 3, Touché) by dyingtolive on Thursday January 05 2017, @06:27AM
The sex change was a success then?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1) by theronb on Thursday January 05 2017, @04:02AM
because it is a prior existing condition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @11:27AM
Nah, it's a dwarf organ.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Guppy on Thursday January 05 2017, @04:07PM
As commentators elsewhere have pointed out, this is just one group's attempt to re-classify a collection of existing and well-known anatomical feature as an organ. It will have to be seen if their arguments gains traction or not among the medical community.
Now, if you want an example of a recent major anatomical discovery, try the Glympatic System, only discovered around 2012 and named in 2014. It's a lymphatic-like drainage system that functions in the brain. It doesn't really have visibly recognizable features you can find in a cadaver dissection, so it remained hidden until modern work with fluorescent tracers revealed its presence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system [wikipedia.org]
An example of a physical structure in the knee, discovered in 2013 (really a re-discovery, first noted in 1879 but forgotten):
Anterolateral Ligament
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterolateral_ligament [wikipedia.org]
An example of a disputed anatomical feature, described in 2013 but not accepted by the entire medical community:
Dua’s Layer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dua's_layer [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday January 06 2017, @03:34AM
Leonardo da Vinci depicted it as one contiguous organ, and it remained that way for centuries until 1885, when Sir Frederick Treves' findings presented the mesentery as fragmented amongst the small intestine, transverse colon and sigmoid colon.
-- http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/04/health/new-organ-mesentery/index.html [cnn.com]