It ’s time to halt picking on the appendix . An clause bring out in the journalComptes Rendus Palevolsupports the possibility that the much - malign electric organ may serve as a “ good planetary house ” for good bacteria .
Your appendix is a little tube connect to the caecum ( a pouch at the end of your big intestine ) on the right side of your abdomen . Most of us know two things about the appendix : that contagion there is unsafe , and that the reed organ itself is useless . The first statement is emphatically dependable . A burst appendix is nobody ’s idea of a in force time . But useless ? Perhaps not .
Onescientific paperpublished in early 2016 found that removing an appendix - like social system in mouse made them more susceptible to contagion and inflammation . Other researchers havearguedthat the little tube act as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria , keeping them secure even when infection damage the rest of the catgut ’s bacterial ecosystem . When the dust settles , the skillful guys in the appendix can start afresh , repopulating the intestine with protective microbe .
Heather F. Smith search the organic evolution of our body at Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine . For her latest study , she and her colleagues compare the developmental history of the appendix in 533 mammal species .
The researchers get hold that , far from originating once in a single common ancestor , the appendix develop independently more than 30 different times — a fact that suggests that it must do something .
The data also express that species that have an appendix also have a gamey concentration of lymphoid tissue paper , which supports resistance and the growth of good bacterium , in the cecum . Taken all together , these finding endure the hypothesis that your appendix is there to serve keep you good and crawling with the right-hand kind of germ .
So it ’s useful , yes . But do we involve it ? Not entirely . “ In universal , ” SmithtoldTIME , “ people who have had an appendicectomy run to be comparatively healthy and not have any major detrimental outcome . ”
There may be some small effect , though . People who ’ve undergone appendectomies are slimly more prone to infection . “ It may also take them slenderly longer to find from illness , ” Smith said , “ especially those in which the beneficial intestine bacteria has been crimson out of the body . ”
