New giant organ discovered in… the human body

vietnamnet.vn• August 19, 2019 14:33

A giant, completely unknown organ has just been found inside the human body by Swedish scientists.

You have a giant mesh of hair-like fibers woven right under your skin, scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have announced. It's a previously unknown organ found in humans and many animals, and is called the "pain glial complex" because it's what makes us feel pain.

New organ in the human body takes the form of a giant thin mesh hidden under the skin - illustration from INDEPENDENT

Previously, it was believed that nerve fibers in the skin were responsible for receiving unpleasant stimuli such as prickling and other forms of pain. But the newly discovered organ is virtually independent, hidden under the skin, made up of countless glial cells called Schwann cells (the main type of beautiful nerve cell in the peripheral nervous system).

However, these cells also have contact with the skin through long, extended tails that surround the heads of pain-sensing nerve cells in the skin, thus creating a tight mechanism for pain.

In experiments on mice, when this "pain glial complex" network was blocked, their perception of pain was significantly reduced.

"Our study shows that pain sensitivity occurs not only in the nerve fibers of the skin, but also in the newly discovered pain-sensitive organ," said Professor Patrik Ernfors, lead author of the study.

According to him, this discovery changes our understanding of the cellular mechanism of physical pain. That could be the premise for more targeted research to prevent and limit chronic pain conditions, which torment countless patients around the world. Recent research in the US shows that more than 20% of adults in this country suffer from chronic pain, defined as pain lasting 3 months or more.