Scientists have found a new organ in the human digestive system, and they are calling it the mesentery.
The mesentery was confused prior as a fragmented and disparate set of structures, but researchers have found that it is actually one continuous organ. Evidence that justifies the discovery was published and reviewed in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology journal.
Essentially the new organ is not new, but its classification is.
According to the paper, distinctive anatomical features were discovered which provided suitable evidence that proved the structure was indeed an organ. Once upon a time, the mesentery was classified as a continuous organ. Leonardo da Vinci depicted it as a continuous organ, which is the way it stayed for centuries. Though in 1885 this all changed when Sir Frederick Treves’ findings presented the organ as “fragmented” and therefore not an organ.
Dr. J. Coffey, the foundation chair of surgery at the University of Limerick, funded research that has caused the modern reclassification for the organic structure. In Coffey’s study, images and compiling evidence shows the clear anatomy of the mesentery. Due to his study, the questionable nature of the continuity of the organ is cleared up–the organ’s continuity can be seen clearly when it exposed in “a certain way.”
Connection is key to the mesentery.
The mesentery is a double fold of peritoneum–the lining of the abdominal cavity–that attaches our intestine to the wall of our abdomen, which keeps everything safely in place. The mesentery allows the intestine to lay in the perfect place in the abdominal wall without it being in direct contact. Its purpose is to link your gut to your body, an important task, and it also carries blood and lymphatic fluid from the intestine to the rest of the human cavity, or body.
“Without a mesentery to keep the intestine connected, the intestine would have to attach directly to the body wall,” Coffey said to CNN. “It is unlikely that it would be able to contract and relax along its entire length if it were directly in contact. It maintains the intestine in a particular conformation, ‘hitched up,’ so that when you stand up or walk about, it doesn’t collapse into the pelvis and not function.”
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