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Researchers have identified a new organ inside human bodies, something that has been hiding in the digestive system so far. It has been called mesentery. The evidence of the organ has been published in latest edition of The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. Although the structure of this new organ is know, its function is still not understood, and studying it could be the key to better understanding and treatment of abdominal and digestive disease.
The new organ is found in the digestive systems, and was thought to be made up of fragmented, separate structures. But the latest research has shown that it is one, continuous organ.
“”In the paper, which has been peer reviewed and assessed, we are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasnâÂÂt 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.””
With the new classification of mesentery, medical students started being taught that the mesentery is a distinct organ, according to a report published in Science Alert. Mesentery is a double fold of peritoneum – the lining of the abdominal cavity – that attaches intestine to the wall of our abdomen, and keeps everything locked in place.
One of the earliest descriptions of the mesentery is said to have been made was by Leonardo da Vinci, and for centuries it was generally ignored as a type of insignificant attachment. Over the past century, doctors who studied the mesentery assumed it was a fragmented structure made of separate sections, which made it pretty unimportant, the Science Alert report said.
But in 2012, Coffey and his colleagues showed through detailed microscopic examinations that the mesentery is actually a continuous structure. Over the past four years, they’ve gathered further evidence that the mesentery should actually be classified as its own distinct organ, and the latest paper makes it official, it said.
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, the magazine said.”
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