Think you know your body? Think again. Scientists have just discovered the mesentery, a new organ inside the human body.
What was previously thought to have been a set of few fragmented structures in the human digestive system has now been proven to be a whole individual organ. With the discovery of the mesentery, humans now have a complete number of 79 organs.
Although what the new organ is responsible for remains unclear, the University Hospital Limerick researcher who discovered it, J Calvin Coffey, says that the discovery opens up a “a whole new area of science”.
Now that the organ’s structure and anatomy have been established and have become known, it is time to identify and understand its function, Coffey added.
His research was published in The Lancet medical journal, and have since been added to the world’s most famous medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy. Medical students have started learning that the mesentery is a distinct organ as well.
It is now upto medical students and researchers to investigate the role of the mysterious organ, and it role in abdominal diseases, and hopefully find new cures and treatments.
The organ itself is a double fold of peritoneum, and is the inner lining of the abdominal cavity that holds your intestine to the wall of the abdomen.
But saying that this is the first time a researcher notices the individuality of it is actually wrong. It is known to have been described first by Leonardo da Vinci in 1508, but has been largely ignored since.
