Doctors have long considered the thymus expendable. But could removing it be fatal?

The thymus, a butterfly-shaped organ that sits between our collarbones, has never seemed like a particularly useful appendage—at least in adults. During early childhood, it provides a place for T cells (the T stands for thymus) to mature into immune cells that attack invaders. But during adolescence the organ begins to shrink and mostly stops producing these cells. By adulthood, it’s assumed to be so useless that cardiac surgeons will occasionally remove it just to get easier access to the heart. But researchers have recently started to question that assumption, and a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine , refutes it outright: The thymus may in fact be crucial for adults , and removing it could prove fatal. The new work is very welcome, says Marcel van den Brink, an immunologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who wasn’t involved in the study. Very little research on adult thymus function exists, he notes. “[The new study] basically confirms something many people have thought, but we never had good evidence for it.” To gauge the importance of the thymus in adults, Harvard University hematologist David Scadden and his colleagues analyzed medical records from nearly 2300 people who had undergone chest surgeries at Massachusetts General Hospital. Half had had thymectomies, usually performed to treat thymus cancer or certain autoimmune conditions such as myasthenia gravis, in which T cells attack th...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news