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A new study reveals that our bones can be filled with undiscovered microscopic tunnel networks.
These tiny tunnels – found in laboratory mice and finding their tracks in a curious researcher – may be essential for transporting the immune cells of the bones where they are made.
In this study, researchers discovered hundreds of previously unknown capillaries – the smallest blood vessels in the body – in the bones of the mouse's leg. The discovery of something in the mouse, however, does not necessarily mean that it exists in humans, and it can often spill over a long period of time between the discovery of a mouse. animal and confirmation of results in humans.
This is not the case in this case: one of the (human) researchers decided to revive human studies; so he blocked his leg in an MRI machine and found evidence that tiny bony tunnels could also exist in humans.
The study was published yesterday (January 21) in the journal Nature Metabolism.
Missing anatomy?
Blood cells are made inside bones in what is called bone marrow. And these blood cells are able to move quickly from the bone marrow to the circulatory system. But How the blood cells could do this – get out of the bones quickly and enter the circulation – was unknown. [The 7 Biggest Mysteries of the Human Body]
An existing first-response medical procedure – known as intraosseous infusion – was alluding to the existence of a pbadageway for getting out of the bone marrow and into the blood vessels. During intraosseous infusion, drugs are injected into the bones of the person's leg, and soon after, they enter the circulation, according to a video in Nature Metabolism.
To search for the missing microscopic tunnels, the researchers used a chemical that gives the mouse bones a transparent appearance. (The chemical removes bones from opaque compounds, including fats.) With the transparent bones left behind, the researchers clearly saw (well, using several different microscopes) hundreds of capillaries never discovered. They named them trans-cortical vessels (TCV).
Next, the researchers stained immune cells called neutrophils made in the bone marrow and watched them move between these capillaries and exit, confirming their results.
A surprising discovery
The discovery was a surprise for the team. "You would not expect to find a new anatomical structure in the bones of humans and mice in the 21st century," Live Science told Matthias Gunzer, professor of experimental immunology at the University of California. University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, in an e-mail.
But Gunzer wanted to know if humans also had these strange capillaries. He volunteered to find out.
Gunzer underwent an MRI of the long leg for several hours. In the resulting images, the capillaries in question were not directly apparent in the image; However, there were "remarkable holes in the bone tissue", which could be signs of their existence, said Gunzer.
This, combined with other data and images, "is a very good case for TCVs that also exist in humans," he said.
In addition, another study published last year in Nature Neuroscience revealed similar networks in the skull that connect to the brain. Their results serve as "independent confirmation of our findings," Gunzer said.
The new findings, if they were still confirmed, could have "potentially very large" multiple implications, particularly for the development of new medical treatments, wrote Christopher Ritchlin, director of the Clinical Immunology Research Unit in the United States. University of Rochester, and Iannis Adamopoulos an badociate professor of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of California at Davis, in a commentary published next to the article. Neither Ritchlin nor Adamopoulos were involved in the research.
In one example, the researchers found that the number of TCVs increased in mice with rheumatoid arthritis – an autoimmune disease that used the joints – as well as in mice exposed to radiation. According to the man, both radiation and arthritis damage the bones, said Gunzer. Thus, "if we find ways to stop the formation of new TCVs, this could prove very useful for people," he said.
Originally published on Science live.
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