National Geographic: Newly discovered organ may be lurking under your skin (pain-sensing glial cells, 2019)

[Ravn]

Haven't got the energy to track down the study/studies this is based on but sounds potentially interesting (and definitely so if you're a mouse - do we not have a mouse emoji? We can't be discussing science and not honour mice with an emoji!)

Identified in mice, the simple organ most likely exists in humans, too, offering fresh insight into how we experience painful pressure and pricks. [...]

While the exact circuitry behind this nearly universal reaction is not fully understood, scientists may have just found an important piece of the puzzle: a previously unknown sensory organ inside the skin.

Dubbed the nociceptive glio-neural complex, this structure is not quite like the typical picture of a complex organ like the heart or the spleen. Instead, it’s a simple organ made up of a network of cells called glial cells, which are already known to surround and support the body’s nerve cells.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...-may-be-lurking-uinder-your-skin-senses-pain/

 

[adambeyoncelowe]

Interesting. Looks like they're already looking at this for chronic pain. I wonder whether it fits with existing theories of central sensitisation or whether it will now replace those theories with something else?

 

[lansbergen]

It could be the anwser to the mystery I could not explain with what is the textbooks.

 

[ladycatlover]

It's written up in the Grauniad too, and they give a link.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6454/695

 

[Wonko]

Is this the second new organ they have discovered in the last year, or is the same one as they discovered last year, that there was a thread on, and possibly an article in something like 'Nature'?

Not up to hunting, just curious if anyone else also remembers something similar in the last year or so.

 

[Arnie Pye]

Is this the second new organ they have discovered in the last year, or is the same one as they discovered last year, that there was a thread on, and possibly an article in something like 'Nature'?

Not up to hunting, just curious if anyone else also remembers something similar in the last year or so.

There have been a couple of new organs found recently. I'm not sure if you were thinking about either of these? The Mesentery and the Interstitium :

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ssified-abdominal-grays-anatomy-a7507396.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...n-scientists-discovery-new-york-a8275851.html

 

[Wonko]

It was the second one, thank you.

I specifically remembered the bit about people missing it because of the way slides were prepared drying it out and making it 'invisible'.

 

[rvallee]

Is this the second new organ they have discovered in the last year, or is the same one as they discovered last year, that there was a thread on, and possibly an article in something like 'Nature'?

Not up to hunting, just curious if anyone else also remembers something similar in the last year or so.

Don't remember the name but the other organ you may be thinking of was something part of the lymphatic drainage system and they missed it because it would be flat and hard to detect unless in vivo. Or something close to that, but it wasn't part of the nervous system.

 

[rvallee]

There have been a couple of new organs found recently. I'm not sure if you were thinking about either of these? The Mesentery and the Interstitium :

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ssified-abdominal-grays-anatomy-a7507396.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...n-scientists-discovery-new-york-a8275851.html

Oh damn, there were two.

But sure, let's go full speed ahead with a massive reform that assumes we know everything there is to know about everything and blames millions of people in some fictitious massive epidemic of mental illness that no one can describe, define or who any evidence for.

What's the worst that can happen? To shreds, you say? And her wife? Oh, my, to shreds you say?

 

[Wonko]

It is quite odd if I think about it, as I understood that medical science had already discovered everything, at least everything on the scale of human organs.

Fair enough there may be some fine tuning required of our understanding of various aspects of micro and cellular biology, but organs?

Surely this can't be true?

If they don't understand such major things about how people work then how can they possibly maintain that anything, anything at all, is a psychiatric, psychological, or behavioural issue?

How can people make careers out of it - when, as far as I can see, 3 new organs have been 'noticed' in the last year?

What sort of species of arrogant, misguided or manalolent f&*^wits are we dealing with here?

Obviously the type that will pay no attention to the implications of medical sciences inability to even notice these organs before now, and keep causing major harm, to me, and to others.

 

[lansbergen]

Fair enough there may be some fine tuning required of our understanding of various aspects of micro and cellular biology, but organs?

Surely this can't be true?

Depends on the definition of an organ.

The skin is long accepted to be an organ. Now part of that organ is called an organ.

 

[JemPD]

It is quite odd if I think about it, as I understood that medical science had already discovered everything, at least everything on the scale of human organs.

Fair enough there may be some fine tuning required of our understanding of various aspects of micro and cellular biology, but organs?

Surely this can't be true?

If they don't understand such major things about how people work then how can they possibly maintain that anything, anything at all, is a psychiatric, psychological, or behavioural issue?

How can people make careers out of it - when, as far as I can see, 3 new organs have been 'noticed' in the last year?

What sort of species of arrogant, misguided or manalolent f&*^wits are we dealing with here?

Obviously the type that will pay no attention to the implications of medical sciences inability to even notice these organs before now, and keep causing major harm, to me, and to others.

Also this https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discover-never-before-seen-vessels-in-the-brain

It went by largely unnoticed, but finding that there are lymphatic vessels in the brain when all the text books say/said there aren't any, that's pretty big iyam, but of course MUS is still assumed to be medically unexplainable symptoms, because, dontcha know, they're all so ruddy clever that everything there is to know or explain is already known & explained.

 

[obeat]

When medical students graduate they should be told that they are now beginning their education. Medical school is just the baseline.

 

[lansbergen]

When medical students graduate they should be told that they are now beginning their education. Medical school is just the baseline.

Right.

 

[Mithriel]

I think most biologists and doctors are open to there being a lot to learn about anatomy and physiology. The problem in my experience has been received knowledge. Generally good doctors have been taught that emotional problems cause physical dysfunction as a fact. They have all met patients who worry they have a disease when they are just anxious so they assume FND "experts" are just seeing extreme cases of that.

If FND and MUPS etc were new ideas it would be hard for them to get accepted but they are built on a framework set up years ago. Victorian medicine with all its misogyny and patronizing.

 

[Saz94]

Interesting. Looks like they're already looking at this for chronic pain. I wonder whether it fits with existing theories of central sensitisation or whether it will now replace those theories with something else?

The article, if I've understood it correctly, seems to say that this is just for "mechanical" types of pain, i.e. when your skin gets cut or you get hit, things like that.

 

[adambeyoncelowe]

The article, if I've understood it correctly, seems to say that this is just for "mechanical" types of pain, i.e. when your skin gets cut or you get hit, things like that.

Yes, but (CNS) glial cells have been identified as a possible thing in fibro too. So it might be possible that if CNS glial cells are involved, so are those in the periphery?