Scientists from the Netherlands have made a startling discovery: they have found a hidden organ inside the human head that resembles a set of salivary glands. It seems that the structure of the human body was thoroughly studied a century ago, but scientists still did not suspect the existence of this organ.
The discovery was made accidentally during the examination of patients with prostate cancer using the latest PSMA PET/CT scanner. During contrast tomography with the introduction of radioactive glucose into the blood, this diagnostic tool detects tumors in the body. In this case, he discovered something else behind the nasopharynx.
The tubular glands, indicated by the blue arrows, are located near other salivary glands, highlighted in orange. “The person has three sets of large salivary glands, but not in this place,” says radiologist-oncologist Vouter Vogel of the Netherlands Cancer Institute. The salivary glands in the nasopharynx are microscopic. About a thousand of them are evenly distributed along the mucous membrane. So you can imagine our surprise when we discovered THIS! The salivary glands produce saliva, which is necessary for the functioning of the digestive system.
Most of it is secreted by three main groups of glands known as the parotid, submandibular, and sublingual glands. There are about a thousand small salivary glands in the human body. They are located throughout the oral cavity and respiratory tract, but are so small that they can only be seen under a microscope. The previously unnoticed fourth set of salivary glands discovered by Fogel’s team is much larger and is located behind the nose and above the palate, right in the center of the head.
Here is what newly discovered veins look like in various projections. “Two organs highlighted during the research show all the characteristics of salivary glands,” says the study’s lead author, oral surgeon Mattias Valstar of the University of Amsterdam. “We called them tubular rods because they are located above the tubular roller [elevation in the nasal part of the throat where the cartilage of the Eustachian tube is located].” Tubular glands were found in all 100 patients examined with PSMA PET/CT. The autopsy of two corpses, one male and one female, also confirmed the existence of a paired structure visible to the naked eye in the form of drainage capillaries in the posterior wall of the nasopharynx. In the video, you can clearly see the location of the tubular irons as well as their structure. “To the best of our knowledge, this structure has not been previously described in any source,” according to the research report published in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology.