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The Biomedical Engineering blog is the place for conversation and discussion about topics related to engineering principles of the medical field. Here, you'll find everything from discussions about emerging medical technologies to advances in medical research. The blog's owner, Chelsey H, is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a degree in Biomedical Engineering.

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New Year, New Organ

Posted January 16, 2017 12:00 AM by Chelsey H

We have a new organ!

The new organ, known as the mesentery, is found in our digestive systems. Researchers found that the long continuous organ is a double fold of peritoneum – the lining of the abdominal cavity- that attaches our intestine to the wall of the abdomen, and keeps everything locked in place. Image Credit

For the past century, doctors assumed that the mesentery was a fragmented structure made of separate sections. It was discovered in 2012 that the mesentery is a continuous structure and over the past four years researchers have been gathering further evidence to confirm that it is its own distinct organ.

This is important because now scientists can categorize abdominal disease in terms of the organ. The next step is to identify the function. Once that has been studied, doctors can identify abnormal functions and diseases.

Thanks to the new research, as of last year, medical student have been taught that the mesentery is a distinct organ.

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#1

Re: New Year, New Organ

01/16/2017 3:29 AM

Damn! For a moment I thought I was getting a brand-new Hammond B-3mk2.

"You know, those folks at CR4 are really nice! What a magnanimous gesture! Now how did they know I wanted one for Christmas? Okay, so it's a wee bit late but hey!"

Only to be confronted a picture of someone's personal haggis.

I'm shattered.

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#13
In reply to #1

Re: New Year, New Organ

01/20/2017 9:09 AM

I was hoping for something a little more Boardwalk-esque...go big or go home...

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#2

Re: New Year, New Organ

01/16/2017 11:57 AM

Sounds more like a malady....while traveling abroad I contracted Mesentery....it developed into messy mesentery, culminating in an unprecedented episode of explosive messy mesentery.....whew, I was lucky to have survived.....the medication they gave me had a side effect that caused Digititus Tourettis where my middle finger keeps extending when my arm is raised....very embarrassing, but happy to be home....

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#3
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Re: New Year, New Organ

01/16/2017 1:04 PM

Clearly you contracted D.T. in the United States as the symptoms elsewhere in the world are quite diverse.

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#4
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Re: New Year, New Organ

01/16/2017 2:14 PM

Wow.. I'll have to rethink my France experience....evidently everything wasn't OK !!

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#5
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Re: New Year, New Organ

01/16/2017 2:39 PM

Judging from her expression I think she would disagree. I dunno, do French women like raptors?

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#6

Re: New Year, New Organ

01/16/2017 11:08 PM

Wonderful news.

The next time the DMV sends me a letter asking which organs I would like to donate, I can write in, ____________ mesentary.

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#7

Re: New Year, New Organ

01/17/2017 6:39 AM

"It was discovered in 2012 that the mesentery is a continuous structure"

???

I knew that when I was a medical student in the 1960s. Topologically speaking, the abdomen is an empty cavity lined by the peritoneum, in the form of a crumpled balloon. All the internal organs protrude into the cavity, wrapped by folds of the balloon:

this diagram, from a very early edition of Gray's Anatomy, makes the point perfectly. Between the two layers of peritoneal tissue which extend to wrap round the tubes of gut and form the mesentery, there is some fat, and there is some evidence that fat cells produce hormones, but there has never been a suggestion that those fat cells are any different from fat cells elsewhere around the abdomen.

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#9
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Re: New Year, New Organ

01/17/2017 10:10 AM

I also learned that the mesentary was a fold of tissue when I took anatomy & physiology in college.

Now they are saying it is an organ.

I believe that is what this story is about.

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#10
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Re: New Year, New Organ

01/17/2017 11:51 PM

Thanks, phph001. I was hoping to read this. We are really 100 per cent organs, down to our hair follicles and boogers.

Years ago I read that the largest organism on the Planet was not a Blue whale, rather a massive hundreds year old fungus on a mountainside in New Guinea or some such place.

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#11
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Re: New Year, New Organ

01/17/2017 11:54 PM

It's in Oregon. A fungus 3.8 km across.

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#12
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Re: New Year, New Organ

01/18/2017 12:14 AM

Oregon? And ex-girl friend of yesteryear was from east Oregon. She was seriously into eating stuff harvested in the woods, extolling the libidinous virtues of various tubers, mushrooms, etc. and very convincing with her unrelenting hedonism. Too bad she got busted.

I still think there is one in New Guinea, where Nature has a lot of stuff on the fringe of reality. Just ask Margaret Mead or Shelley Errington.

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#8

Re: New Year, New Organ

01/17/2017 9:23 AM

Evolution at work again? I assume the Baby Boomer generation had fragmented ones, and the Millennials have ones that aren't? How else can you explain missing this for such a long time period?

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