Researchers from Ireland's University of Limerick have identified a new organ: the mesentery, a double-sheeted fatty membrane that keeps the inner organs of the stomach cavity from moving around, according to an article in the November 2016 issue of The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology medical journal. Until now, anatomy textbooks have classed the mesentery as a series of disconnected tissues, but new research shows that it is a single, continuous bodily structure that meets the requirements to be classed as a separate organ. Limerick University surgeon and researcher J. Calvin Coffey authored the peer-reviewed medical paper after conducting a series of studies from 2012 to 2014. "When we approach [the mesentery] like every other organ ... we can categorize abdominal disease in terms of this organ," Coffey said in a statement. He told Discover Magazine that "without it, you can't live." It is still not known whether the organ has a function other than keeping other abdominal organs in place and to what organ system it belongs. Organs are usually identified as such after their function has been discovered. "Now we have established anatomy and the structure," Coffey said. "The next step is the function. If you understand the function, you can identify abnormal function, and then you have disease." Coffey's paper suggests the organ may regulate the movement of white blood cells through the intestines, but further research is required. Coffey said he hoped the breakthrough would aid the fight against gastrointestinal diseases such as Crohn's. Leonardo Da Vinci first discovered the mesentery in 1508, but the discovery was ignored until now.
