Enlarge / J Calvin Coffey (credit: University of Limerick)
For more than a century, doctors have regarded the folds of flesh that hold our intestines in place as snippets of an elaborate support structure—convoluted, but not much to talk about. Yet when a pair of Irish researchers took a closer look recently, they found that it’s actually one continuous fatty membrane, possibly constituting a whole new functional organ: the mesentery.
If the reclassification gets adopted by the medical field at large, it would bring the human body’s organ tally to 79 (by most counts).
The mesentery, a ruffled and folded flap around the intestines, reaches from the base of the stomach down to the rectum. For support, it latches to the abdominal wall and the area of the backbone. Its most obvious purpose is to keep our guts from slipping and sliding around. But, the Irish researchers, J Calvin Coffey and D Peter O’Leary of the University of Limerick, suggest that the new organ may have other roles, including shuttling white blood cells around the intestines.
Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – The human body may have a new organ—the mesentery