Research Showing Mesentery Is Single Organ, Not Separate Entities, Could Offer Clinical Laboratories New Methods to Diagnose Disease
Once thought to be separate components, the new model of a contiguous mesentery could lead to new medical laboratory tools for diagnosing and treating digestive diseases such as Crohn’s and colorectal cancer
For more than a century, pathology professionals have treated the network of tissue folds surrounding the human digestive system, known as the mesentery, as separate entities. However, new research indicates the mesentery is in fact a single, continuous organ and therefore reverses that thinking. This could impact the way pathologists and medical laboratories currently perform diagnostics and testing of digestive diseases.
Dr. J. Calvin Coffey, Professor of Surgery at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and Dr. Peter O’Leary, PhD, MBBS, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), published their findings in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology. (more…)
