Unknown human body part discovered: 'Tunnel' in the brain

Research just published in the journal Nature Neurosience has discovered tunnel-like structures connecting the human skull and meninges, as well as its unexpected function.

Researcher Mathias Nahrendorf from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (USA) found the structures in 2018 when he looked at the skulls of mice, then humans.

Since then, they have been trying to determine the function of this unknown organ. They are like microscopic seams between the medulla of the skull and the meninges.

Tunneling immune cell transport channels in the human brain.

In the new study, the authors developed a technique to "mark" cells by staining a fluorescent membrane, injecting it into the bone in mice. Red-stained cells were injected into the skull and blue-stained cells were injected into the tibia.

They found that when a foreign agent attacked, the skull contributed more neutrophils to the brain than the tibia contributed to the body parts near it. That helps to find clues about the connecting structures found only in the brain mentioned above.

According to Science Alert, the next step in testing showed that those connections were actually tunnels, where immune cells were rapidly routed by the skull to the brain to protect the brain during inflammatory events, including stroke and meningitis.

These tunnels - or immune cell transport channels - are five times larger in humans than in mice, making circulation extremely efficient.

The discovery holds promise for helping to decipher the body's mechanisms to fight inflammatory agents, as well as the reverse threats in immune disorders that cause the immune system to become overactive and attack. brain such as multiple sclerosis. Understanding the mechanism and operating pathway will facilitate targeted and effective treatments.