New Year, New Organ (or, And Then There Were 79)
January 4, 2017 7:07 AM   Subscribe

It's official: A brand-new human organ has been classified

No, Scientists Have Not Found a 'New Organ'
Systematic study of the mesentery is now possible because of clarification of its structure. Although this area of science is in an early phase, important advances have already been made and opportunities uncovered. For example, distinctive anatomical and functional features have been revealed that justify designation of the mesentery as an organ. Accordingly, the mesentery should be subjected to the same investigatory focus that is applied to other organs and systems. In this Review, we summarise the findings of scientific investigations of the mesentery so far and explore its role in human disease. We aim to provide a platform from which to direct future scientific investigation of the human mesentery in health and disease.
The mesentery is having its day in the spotlight.
posted by Etrigan (36 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ooooo. Oowww. My mesentery is acting up. I'm off to see my mesenterologist.

Actually, we learned about this in med school. It's the guts holding all the other guts together. no, i didn't do well in anatomy. Too many guts.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:23 AM on January 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


I can finally complete my Oregon Trail limerick.
posted by bondcliff at 7:35 AM on January 4, 2017 [119 favorites]


My crewmates think maybe I have a new organ. It's hard to say. There was a disturbance on our ship. I went down to the lower level to check it out. There were all of these kind of leathery, ovoid things. Something jumped up and attached itself to my face and started choking me. Dallas and Ash were able to get it off me, though. I had a fever for a bit. But really, once I woke up, outside of some dry mouth and hunger, I felt fine. Although, come to think of it, I might have some cramping and--
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:41 AM on January 4, 2017 [12 favorites]


*organ music*
posted by jonmc at 7:42 AM on January 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


"Enjoy it while it lasts, kid." --Pluto
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:43 AM on January 4, 2017 [19 favorites]


A medication I was trying for my Crohn's disease was giving me some unpleasant and unexpected side effects, so I found myself at a urologist's office. He ordered some x-rays, and found that much to my surprise, I had a couple of serious kidney stones.

So I spent a couple of weeks getting psyched and prepped for surgery, all the while being slightly puzzled about the lack of pain; I mean, there was pain, because Crohn's, but it didn't seem to be of the same quality as the kidney stone pain I recall from years past.

But still, I showed up, got the pre-surgery x-rays, and... what do you know, those aren't kidney stones.

It turns out that my Crohn's disease had caused enough inflammation in my mesenteric process that it looked, from a certain angle, on an x-ray, like I had kidney stones.

There's not much point to this, but how often do you have a chance to share mesenteric anecdotes?
posted by MrVisible at 7:45 AM on January 4, 2017 [59 favorites]


I can finally complete my Oregon Trail limerick.

I laughed so hard at this. And then I RTFA, and saw that the researcher pushing for the mesentery to be designated an organ is J. Calvin Coffey of the University Hospital Limerick in Ireland.
posted by Kabanos at 7:46 AM on January 4, 2017 [14 favorites]


I can finally complete my Oregon Trail limerick.

I laughed so hard at this. And then I RTFA, and saw that the researcher pushing for the mesentery to be designated an organ is J. Calvin Coffey of the University Hospital Limerick in Ireland.


I spent more time trying to make this post a limerick than I spent on the names of any of my children. Possibly on all of them combined.
posted by Etrigan at 7:54 AM on January 4, 2017 [21 favorites]


I now have a new second-favourite organ. Sorry, brain.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:58 AM on January 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


As someone who deals with Medical systems and taxonomies of knowledge every glorious day of my waking life, I celebrate and [do not] celebrate this discovery and [non] discovery simultaneously, knowing that it will cause beautiful, glorious confusion as it makes its way through [and not through] things.
posted by mrdaneri at 8:00 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yay for philosophy of anatomy!
posted by oddman at 8:20 AM on January 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's fun to search on Amazon and see all of the wonderful auto-generated products emblazoned with #mesentery and "got mesentary?" And a music track from Bitch Magnet.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:36 AM on January 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have friends with erratic Crohns (i.e. sort of atypical patterns of flare-ups), and diagnoses like 'abdominal migraines' who mostly just receive treatment for symptoms, due to the causes or even the actual dysfunction being mysterious.

Is the recognition of the mesentary related to these sorts of illnesses?
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:15 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


This post was about the mesentery, but bondcliff made it about all of our hearts.
posted by robotmachine at 9:19 AM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


An Oregon-Trail-inspired poet
Whose limericks didn't quite float
Saw the mesentery get fame,
Rekindling his flame,
And now he's got something to show for it.
posted by Shepherd at 9:29 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Big deal. I put new human organs inside me every day! It's how I maintain my unnatural Demi-life!

To be honest, technically they are "used" organs, but they're new to me.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:30 AM on January 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


There once was a man in a cemetery
Who'd caught a disease of the mesentery.
Because of this organ
He'd never see Oregon
Said his tombstone,
          .                  *                     * 
                  *        .          *        .   .       .
          .         .            .          .     *       
       *     ,_          *   .-.-------.                 .
           __(_\   .        //^\\       \  *      .       . 
         ~( _ )    ___      \\_//_______/      .--------.-.
       ^^ // >>^^,/ _ )~ ^^/[_=/]______]^^^^^^/        //^\\^^^
                /_/< \\   /_(=/ (o)  (o)      \________\\=//
                                 ~    ~       [________[\__]\
          ^^^               ^^                (o)    (o)`\=)_\
You have died of dysentery.
posted by jedicus at 9:32 AM on January 4, 2017 [46 favorites]


(A slight abuse of the limerick form. The last bit is meant to be read as though on a single line.

Also I couldn't find an ASCII art tombstone generator and am far too lazy to make one myself.)
posted by jedicus at 9:37 AM on January 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


I am the very model of a reclassified mesent'ry
They're updating the textbooks and clickbaiting at the peasantry
There's rows in crowds of etiologists about pathology
Taxonomists are grappling with my medical hierarchy
On MetaFilter users make nostalgic edutainment jokes
And anti-vaxxers gather to declare the whole damn thing a hoax
I've made two thousand seventeen begin itself digestively
I am the very model of a reclassified mesent'ry
posted by cortex at 10:49 AM on January 4, 2017 [18 favorites]


Great, now the pleura will want to be an organ too. And it already has its own disease.
posted by TedW at 11:02 AM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


There once was a banker from Boston
Who woke to his shoes being tossed on
His friend's mesentery
Racked with dysentery
peperony and chease -- not that awesome
posted by Copronymus at 11:11 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


i haven't read the article yet but i hope this is about the dinosaur brain in our butts
posted by poffin boffin at 11:11 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


a chuck tingle novel
posted by cortex at 11:14 AM on January 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


pounded in the brain by our own butts
posted by poffin boffin at 11:57 AM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Have you tried the braised cedar-planked mesentery at Les Pantalons Fancie? It's divine.
posted by XMLicious at 12:07 PM on January 4, 2017


Apart from a pirate head and a pirate heart, the Pirates of Penzance all possess a mizzentary.
posted by Kabanos at 12:13 PM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Could Pluto be reclassified as an organ? If it can't be a planet, maybe it can at least be an organ.
posted by XMLicious at 12:38 PM on January 4, 2017


The mesentery is one of my favorite structures! I've always called it that, a "structure". I'd be delighted to call it an organ instead! I jump at the opportunity to talk about the mesentery with people, but it's a difficult str^H^H^H organ to describe. Layers of membrane, in my abdomen? and they wrinkle their brow. At least with the spleen, another mystery organ, you can point to what is clearly a discreet thing. I have to dedicate an entire hour to lecturing on the structure of the mesentery. And even after that, rarely do students really begin to understand it until they see it in the dissection lab and flop it around and follow with their hands its folds and connections.

So, I'm excited that it's getting a spotlight. I think the structure of the mesentery is pretty well understood, though. This review article takes pains to say that the mesentery has been incorrectly described in the past, but I disagree with that rhetoric—at least on a gross level. I'm still reading it but I'm not seeing anything yet that differs from current descriptions of its gross structure. All the various ways that it connects organs and folds back on itself are pretty well nailed down. Though, by its nature the mesentery is a very difficult structure to illustrate. (The digital artwork in the paper is not the most instructive IMO.) And many textual descriptions I read are imprecise.

But A LOT more research needs to be done on the histological structure of the thing, especially with respect to the immune system, and research into its function is still very much in the infancy. Descriptions of what it does can get seriously hand-wavey. For example, I've heard tales of it apparently migrating towards areas of inflammation inside the abdominal cavity, whether to wall off the spread of infection or to mobilize an immune response or who knows? I've heard some surgeons say they just chop off parts of it when it gets in their way, a practice that if true horrifies me.

This is a great review, though, and I'm going to scour their references list to make sure I'm teaching the best current knowledge. Thanks for the post!
posted by cyclopticgaze at 12:45 PM on January 4, 2017 [14 favorites]


cyclopticgaze, if you teach with the same enthusiasm you wrote this with your students are very fortunate to have you.
posted by ezust at 3:30 PM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Have you tried the braised cedar-planked mesentery at Les Pantalons Fancie? It's divine.

But it's not free range, is it?
posted by Splunge at 3:52 PM on January 4, 2017


Only posting to help this thread keep up its omentum.
posted by tss at 4:13 PM on January 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


Mesentery is a fine name and all, but I was really hoping for something else.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 5:50 PM on January 4, 2017


It seems they've discovered the organ,
That plagued all the Trails to Oregon,
Your spasming mesentry,
Indicates dysentery,
Your passing is pretty much foregone.
posted by quinndexter at 10:28 PM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


cyclopticgaze, have you seen a better illustration online somewhere? If so, could you point the way to it? I've been looking around but haven't been able to find one. Thanks!
posted by rafaella gabriela sarsaparilla at 6:23 AM on January 5, 2017


rafaella gabriela sarsaparilla, lots of good illustrations pop up when image searching "peritoneum" or "omentum". However, I think the difficulty comes from the fact that "the mesentery" is not one structure but a collection of related structures that have a complex three-dimensional shape; any one image can show some parts well, but not all of them.

Nomenclature is another difficulty. "Mesentery" is a generic term for a double-layer of peritoneum, the peritoneum being the membrane that covers the inner walls of the abdominal cavity and the outside surfaces of many abdominal organs. There are multiple mesenteries—"the" mesentery is not so much a single structure but an umbrella term for a collection of mesenteric structures formed by the peritoneal membrane reflecting upon itself. The Lancet review article that is the source of this post argues for them to be considered a single organ, I think largely to simplify discussion and promote renewed research interest, which is overdue IMO.

I'd recommend a resource that combines textual descriptions with images. An excellent one, though I'm not sure if it's online, is Thieme's Anatomy An Essential Textbook. Section 8 on the peritoneal cavity is concise and well illustrated. (As is the rest of that book. I cannot recommend it too highly, especially for the price. Similarly, their recently updated Atlas of Anatomy is incredible.)
posted by cyclopticgaze at 9:25 AM on January 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: pounded in the brain by our own butts
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess at 2:56 PM on January 5, 2017 [2 favorites]


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