New Large Organ Discovered in Human Body

Health Wellness

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Over the past century, the human body has been thoroughly studied, cut up, sliced, dissected, placed under a microscope, probed with x-rays, MRI, CT and PET scans and tested for just about every chemical or compound known to man. One would think that science knew every organ in the human body only too well.

When I was in graduate school, we worked on human cadavers and had to identify every organ in the body, along with every bone, muscle and major nerves. Our textbook was the classic edition of Gray’s Anatomy, originally published in 1858, but the edition we used was published in 1988.

The only thing that has really changed in all that time was learning new functions for many of the organs and other parts of the body, but as for new organs, they’ve been pretty much known for many years.

That is until now.

Back in 2015, two doctors, Dr. David Carr and Dr. Petros Benias, were working together at the Mount Sinai-Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. They were using a new technology called ‘probe-based confocal laser endomicroscopy to study a patient’s bile duct and discovered something they didn’t expect to find.

They discovered a series of interconnected cavities or spaces in the surrounding tissue that had never been described before. When a pathologist made slides of the tissue, the cavities had disappeared, but when examined using the confocal laser endomicroscopy, the cavities were definitely there, posing a conundrum as to what they were and why they hadn’t ever been detected before.

The answer to the paradox facing the doctors was simple. Over half of our bodies are made up of water, with about 67% of that water being trapped insides our cells and about 33% outside the cells. The fluid outside the cells is referred to as ‘interstitial’ fluid. When tissue is examined under a microscope, it is sliced and then treated with various chemicals to make the different parts of the tissue visible. In the process, the fluid that filled the cavities discovered by the two doctors, drains out of the tissue and the cavities collapse.

Scientists have long known about the tissue and generally thought of it as being layers of collagen and connective tissue that is found throughout the body. With the new method of study, the doctors discovered that the presumed layers of collagen and connective tissue was actually a complex system on interconnected fluid filled cavities that exist throughout the body and is in fact a newly discovered organ.

Since the fluid has always been referred to as interstitial fluid, the doctors have named the newly discovered organ the interstitium. The name is tentative since in order to be an official name, it has to be fully recognized by the rest of the science and medical community.

They believe its primary function may be that of a shock absorber to protect the underlying tissues, organs and other parts from the daily bumps and jostling we out bodies experience. They also believe it may play a role in the spread of some diseases throughout the body, including cancer, but more research is necessary.

If the interstitium is officially recognized as a new organ, it could become one of the largest organs in the human body.

Biology Interstitium Research Science

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