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Your appendix might serve an important biological function after all
...
One of the best pieces of evidence we’ve had for this suggestion is a 2012 study, which found that individuals without an appendix were four times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile colitis - a bacterial infection that causes diarrhoea, fever, nausea, and abdominal pain.
As Scientific American explains, recurrence in individuals with their appendix intact occurred in 11 percent of cases reported at the Winthrop-University Hospital in New York, while recurrence in individuals without their appendix occurred in 48 percent of cases.
Now the Midwestern University team has taken a different approach to arrive at the same conclusion. First they gathered data on the presence or absence of the appendix and other gastrointestinal and environmental traits across 533 mammal species over the past 11.244 million years.
Onto each genetic tree for these various lineages, they traced how the appendix evolved through years of evolution, and found that once the organ appeared, it was almost never lost.
"The appendix has evolved independently in several mammal lineages, over 30 separate times, and almost never disappears from a lineage once it has appeared," the team explains in a press statement. "This suggests that the appendix likely serves an adaptive purpose."
...http://www.sciencealert.com/your-appendix-might-serve-an-important-biological-function-after-all-2#.WHtGqNT63aM.facebook
One of the best pieces of evidence we’ve had for this suggestion is a 2012 study, which found that individuals without an appendix were four times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile colitis - a bacterial infection that causes diarrhoea, fever, nausea, and abdominal pain.
As Scientific American explains, recurrence in individuals with their appendix intact occurred in 11 percent of cases reported at the Winthrop-University Hospital in New York, while recurrence in individuals without their appendix occurred in 48 percent of cases.
Now the Midwestern University team has taken a different approach to arrive at the same conclusion. First they gathered data on the presence or absence of the appendix and other gastrointestinal and environmental traits across 533 mammal species over the past 11.244 million years.
Onto each genetic tree for these various lineages, they traced how the appendix evolved through years of evolution, and found that once the organ appeared, it was almost never lost.
"The appendix has evolved independently in several mammal lineages, over 30 separate times, and almost never disappears from a lineage once it has appeared," the team explains in a press statement. "This suggests that the appendix likely serves an adaptive purpose."
...http://www.sciencealert.com/your-appendix-might-serve-an-important-biological-function-after-all-2#.WHtGqNT63aM.facebook
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
At least I still have my tonsils.
