{"id":11372,"date":"2024-04-30T16:55:26","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T16:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/used82.com\/?p=11372"},"modified":"2024-04-30T16:55:26","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T16:55:26","slug":"scientists-accidentally-discovered-a-new-organ-in-the-human-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/used82.com\/?p=11372","title":{"rendered":"Scientists accidentally discovered a new organ in the human body"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The team of scientists were looking into prostate cancer when they made the incredible find<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When you think of scientific discoveries, a lot of people\u2019s minds immediately turn to the more outlandish finds.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like the\u00a0missing continent of Zealandia<\/a>\u00a0or the\u00a0massive \u2018ocean\u2019 beneath Earth\u2019s surface<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, some of the most impressive scientific discoveries have come from within ourselves.<\/p>\n

Given how long we\u2019ve been around, you\u2019d think we\u2019d have learned everything there is to know about the human body.<\/p>\n

However in 2020,\u00a0scientists<\/a>\u00a0somehow stumbled upon an entire organ that they\u2019d never actually spotted before.<\/p>\n

The team working on the study in the\u00a0Netherlands<\/a>\u00a0were actually studying prostate\u00a0cancer<\/a>\u00a0whey they came across the mysterious organ.<\/p>\n

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\"Scientists<\/div>\n

Scientists accidentally discovered the new organ. (YouTube\/Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek)<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

And somehow it\u2019s located just beneath the face, so we\u2019ve been staring at it the whole time.<\/p>\n

At this point, you may be wondering how a team studying prostate cancer ended up discovering an organ in the human head, considering those are two different ends of the body.<\/p>\n

Well, it all went down after the scientists at the Netherlands Cancer Institute conducted a series of CT and PET scans on patients who had been injected with radioactive glucose that makes tumours glow on the scans.<\/p>\n

As they studied the scans, the team noticed two areas within the heads were lighting up, suggesting a set of salivary glands were tucked away in there.<\/p>\n

When they managed to track down the organ, the team gave it the catchy name of the \u2018tubarial salivary gland\u2019.<\/p>\n

The glands can be found behind the nose; in the nook where the nasal cavity meets the throat, and is designed to \u2018lubricate and moisten the area of the throat behind the nose and mouth\u2019.<\/p>\n

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\"It<\/div>\n

It was found in the face. (Netherlands Cancer Institute)<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Experts were understandably baffled at how the glands had managed to go unnoticed for so long, though Dr Wouter Vogel, radiation oncologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, had an idea as to how they might have gone unnoticed.<\/p>\n

He explained it takes \u2018very sensitive imaging\u2019 to spot the glands, and they\u2019re \u2018not very accessible\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have three sets of large salivary glands, but not there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as we knew, the only salivary or mucous glands in the nasopharynx are microscopically small, and up to 1,000 are evenly spread out throughout the mucosa. So, imagine our surprise when we found these.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the discovery wasn\u2019t intentional, scientists hope their findings will help cancer patients experience less complications after receiving radiotherapy, as they believe many complications surrounding the treatment are connected to the tubarial salivary glands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The team of scientists were looking into prostate cancer when they made the incredible find…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":127,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}