Tag: anatomy

Categories : GastrointestinalTags :

Not Your ‘Average’ Gut: Study Reveals Great Variation in Gastrointestinal Systems

On By ModernMedia
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There is a great deal of variation in the anatomy of the gastrointestinal system, with pronounced differences possible between healthy individuals, according to surprising new research published in PeerJ. Differences between males and females were also uncovered.

The finding has implications for understanding the role that the digestive tract’s anatomy can play in affecting human health, as well as providing potential insights into medical diagnoses and the microbial ecosystem of the gut.

“There was research more than a century ago that found variability in the relative lengths of human intestines, but this area has largely been ignored since then,” says Amanda Hale, study co-first author and a PhD candidate at North Carolina State University. “When we began exploring this issue, we were astonished at the extent of the variability we found.”

“If you’re talking to four different people, odds are good that all of them have different guts, in terms of the relative sizes of the organs that make up that system,” says Erin McKenney, corresponding author and an assistant professor of applied ecology at NC State. “For example, the cecum is an organ that’s found at the nexus of the large and small intestine. One person may have a cecum that is only a few centimeters long, while another may have a cecum the size of a coin purse. And we found similar variability for many digestive organs.”

In another striking example, the researchers found that women tend to have longer small intestines than men.

“Because having a longer small intestine helps you extract nutrients from your diet, this finding supports the canalisation hypothesis, which posits that women are better able to survive during periods of stress,” says Hale.

“Given that there is more variation in human gut anatomy than we thought, this could inform our understanding of what is driving a range of health-related issues and how we treat them,” says McKenney. “Basically, now that we know this variability exists, it raises a number of research questions that need to be explored.”

For this study, the researchers measured the digestive organs of 45 people who donated their remains to the Anatomical Gifts Program at the Duke University School of Medicine.

In addition to shedding light on the unexpected variability in human anatomy, this project also led to rediscovering the importance of teaching anatomical variation to medical students.

“It’s particularly important in medical training, because if students are only learning about a ‘normal’ or ‘average’ anatomy, that means they are not going to be familiar with the scope of human variation,” says Roxanne Larsen, co-author of the paper and an associate professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences at the University of Minnesota. “It’s increasingly clear that the medical field is moving toward individualized medicine to improve patient outcomes and overall health and well-being. Garnering experience in understanding anatomical variation can play a critical role in helping future doctors understand the importance of individualised medicine.”

“We’re excited about this discovery and future directions for the work,” McKenney says. “It underscores just how little we know about our own bodies.”

Source: North Carolina State University

Categories : Medical Research & TechnologyTags :

A New Understanding of the Fundamental Order of the Abdomen

On By ModernMedia
Source: Pixabay

In a research paper published in Communications Biology, researchers from the University of Limerick have detailed the development and structure of the mesentery. In doing this, they uncovered a new order by which all contents of the abdomen are organised or arranged – or the “fundamental order of the abdomen”, where organs are in one of two compartments.

Professor Calvin Coffey, Foundation Chair of Surgery at UL’s School of Medicine in Ireland, whose major discovery led to the reclassification of the mesentery as a new organ in 2016, has published new research on the makeup and structure of the abdomen.

The importance of these findings on the mesentery and the impact these have on our understanding of the abdomen have been further explained in a review article just published in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Prof Coffey explained that his team have been looking at the development and structure of the mesentery since 2016.

“We showed how the mesentery is a single and continuous organ in and on which all abdominal digestive organs develop and then remain connected to throughout life,” he explained.

“These findings revealed a simplicity in the abdomen that was not apparent in conventional descriptions of anatomy.”

The international team of researchers used cutting edge techniques to clarify how the mesentery develops and the shape it has in adults.

Their work revealed that the organisation of the abdomen has a remarkably simple design.

“The abdomen is not the dauntingly complex collection of separate organs it was previously thought to be,” said Prof Coffey.

“Instead, all digestive organs are neatly packaged and arranged by the mesentery into a single digestive engine. That simplicity lay hidden until clarification of the nature of the mesentery.”

The model itself was described by the team in the most recent edition of Gray’s Anatomy. The supportive evidence was published in Communications Biology and the clinical importance was explained in the review in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

“The most important finding here was the discovery of the fundamental order of the abdomen. At the foundation level, all contents of the abdomen are simply organised into one of two compartments,” explained Prof Coffey.

“The fundamental order of any structure is of considerable importance, in particular when it comes to diagnosing patients with illness and treating their disease. The fundamental order is the foundation from which all science launches and clinical practice is based.

“The organisational simplicity of the abdomen now immediately explains the behaviours of viral and bacterial infections, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, diabetes and many others,” he added.

Improvements in surgery have been made to surgery by a better understanding of the mesentery and its functions, and the new research builds on those advances. There are also exciting areas for future investigation, according to Prof Coffey.

“Patients are already benefiting from what we now call mesenteric-based approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of most abdominal conditions. The Mesenteric Model of Abdominal Anatomy – or the description of the order of the abdomen – is being incorporated into numerous reference curricula at this moment,” he said.

“Regarding the future, it is being argued that we are seeing a paradigmatic shift from old to new order. Already, intriguing questions are emerging that we can call ‘legitimate or admissible’ in the strictest scientific sense. Science can approach numerous questions in a new light.  Clinicians can design diagnostic and treatment approaches based on a new foundation,” Prof Coffey concluded.

Source: EurekAlert!