A strange anomaly on scans turned out to be an entirely new organ, hidden within your face
Source: www.iflscience.com Author: James Felton, Senior Staff Writer Image Credit: Valstar et al., Radiotherapy and Oncology, 2020 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) You'd think after centuries of cracking open humans and taking a poke around inside we'd have discovered every organ there is to be found in there, but you'd be wrong. In fact, they seem to be popping up all the time. In 2018, researchers discovered the largest organ in the body, interconnected fluid-filled sacs that run through the collagen and elastin structures in the areas beneath our skin and between other organs and tissues in our bodies. Well, wouldn't you know it, scientists have just found another new organ inside us. It's getting pretty crowded in here. Oncologists at the Netherlands Cancer Institute were using a new kind of scan as part of their research into patients with head and neck cancer. They used positron emission tomography/computed tomography with prostate-specific membrane antigen ligands (PSMA PET/CT) scans, which have been shown to be an effective way of tracking the spread of prostate cancer around the body. Patients are injected with radioactive glucose before the scan, which highlights tumors within the patient by glowing brightly. While using this scan on patients, however, the team noticed two areas in the head unexpectedly lit up. As they kept scanning patients, they kept finding the same area lighting up. It turned out all 100 people scanned had bright spots. It wasn't an anomaly, it was potentially an entirely new organ. The new discovery, [...]