Scientists identify new organ inside human body

Researchers in Ireland have revealed that the human body has an additional organ that has until now been misunderstood for at least a century.

According to a professor at the University of Limerick’s Graduate Entry Medical School the mesentery organ is no longer a mystery.

Professor, J. Calvin Coffey, says the mesentery, which connects the abdomen to the intestines, is not a fragmented group of tissues as the scientific community has long held, but a single, unified organ.

"We are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn't been acknowledged as such to date," he said in a news release.

The surprising discovery means the human body now has 79 organs.

The researchers published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal The Lancet.

The identification of the organ has already led to an update to one of the world's most famous medical textbooks, Gray's Anatomy.

And it is the basis for a whole new field of science, noted Coffey in a news release.

A clearer understanding of the mesentery as a single organ could make surgeries less invasive, reduce complications and speed recovery time, as well as reduce costs, the release noted.

Researchers say they still don't quite understand the mesentery's key functions, beyond the obvious role as a connective layer.

One of the world's earliest depictions of the mesentery was produced by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.

While his drawing and subsequent medical illustrations showed the mesentery as a continuous structure, in the past century scientists came to believe it was a series of broken-up pieces, and thus less medically significant.

"When we approach it like every other organ...we can categorize abdominal disease in terms of this organ," Coffey said in the news release.

"This is relevant universally as it affects all of us," he added. "Up to now there was no such field as mesenteric science."

Today's top news stories- January 6