At this point in humanity, the normal thing would be to believe that after studying the human body for so many centuries, there would be nothing left to discover, that we would have identified each and every one of our organs. Well, we would be wrong about it (without going any further in 2018, scientists discovered a series of interconnected fluid-filled sacs that traverse the elastin and collagen structures under our skin, organs and tissues).
As sometimes happens in science, the discovery was totally accidental. We have to be at the top of the throat. This nasopharyngeal region behind the nose was thought to harbor nothing but diffuse microscopic salivary glands; But what a team of scientists from the Netherlands Cancer Institute has just discovered is a set of salivary glands located deep in the throat and measuring 3.9 centimeters long on average. The new organ has been dubbed the tubarial salivary glands due to its location on a piece of cartilage called the torus tubarius .
What does this ‘new’ organ do?
According to experts, the tubarial salivary glands probably lubricate and moisten the upper part of the throat behind the nose and mouth (precisely the usual location where COVID-19 swabs are taken).
How did they find out?
It was fortuitous. The experts were using a combination of CT and positron emission tomography (PET) scans called PSMA PET-CT to study prostate cancer. In PSMA PET-CT scanning, doctors inject a radioactive “tracer” into the patient that binds well to the PSMA protein, which is highly represented in prostate cancer cells. Essentially, patients are injected with radioactive glucose before the scan, which highlights the tumors within the patient by glowing brightly. But something showed up on this scan. The researchers noticed that two areas of the head unexpectedly lit up. As they kept scanning patients, they kept finding that the same area lit up. Up to 100 people had those bright spots. And they even dissected that region of the nasopharynx from two cadavers from a human body donation program and found that the newly discovered region consisted of mucous gland tissue and ducts that drain into the nasopharynx. What was it? It was clear that it was not an anomaly: it was a completely new organ.
“Humans have three sets of large salivary glands,” explains Wouter Vogel, leader of the study published in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology. “As far as we knew, the only salivary or mucous glands in the nasopharynx are microscopically small and up to 1,000 are evenly distributed throughout the mucosa. So imagine our surprise when we found these .”
If the findings are confirmed, this will be the first discovery of a new human organ in about 300 years. And this is an important discovery for the treatment of cancer, as doctors who use radiation to the head and neck to treat cancer try to avoid irradiating the salivary glands because damage to these glands can affect quality of life ( with problems eating, swallowing or speaking).
“For most patients, it should technically be possible to avoid delivering radiation to this newly discovered location in the salivary gland system in the same way that we try to preserve known glands,” Vogel concludes.
Referencia: The Netherlands Cancer Institute / The tubarial salivary glands: A potential new organ at risk for radiotherapy. Matthijs H. Valstar, Bernadette S.de Bakker Roel JHM Steenbakkers Kees H.de Jong, Johannes A. Langendijkd, Ludi E. Smeeleab Wouter V .Vogelkl. Radiotherapy and Oncology 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radonc.2020.09.034
