Cuando leo estas noticias a veces pienso que la ciencia sigue sin conocer cómo funciona nuestro maravilloso organismo , pero quieren hacernos creer que conocen todo lo que pasó millones de años atrás ,al exponer su «teoría de la evolución «Ud les creen ?
Anatomy of surprise: Scientists discover hidden blood networks that cross through bone
«Nunca visto», dijo Ralph Müller, quien estudió biomecánica en el Instituto Federal de Tecnología de Suiza en México, y que no estaba disponible en este estudio. «Pero nunca hemos visto realmente tampoco
Que la anatomía aún contenga tales sorpresas es en sí misma una sorpresa. Es fácil pensar que los anatomistas del siglo XIX separaron el tendón del cuerpo por el tendón, vena por vena, describiendo y dibujando cada filamento que encontraron, sin importar cuán pequeño sea. Pero hace ocho años, Matthias Gunzer, un inmunólogo de la Universidad Duisburg-Essen, en Alemania, vio algo que no se ajustaba a los modelos actuales. Había teñido algunos glóbulos blancos rojos y verdes para poder rastrear el camino de su fluorescencia a través de la pata de un ratón bajo el microscopio. Lo que vio fue extraño: estas células parecían estar cruzando una pared de hueso sólido. Relacionados: los científicos vuelven los huesos transparentes par dejarlos ver en la médula
He figured that someone else would have described the channels they were taking — but as he leafed through the mouse blood-vessel literature, he found no mention of them. He decided he would have to describe them himself. “In order to be convincing,” he said, “you have to show that they are there, demonstrate that there is a blood-filled thing.”
To do that, Gunzer’s team treated the bone with a liquid that made it clear as glass, revealing the soft capillaries inside, like insects caught in amber. But that wasn’t good enough; they still needed to prove what it is these tunnels were doing. So they stained proteins that are present in blood vessels and then used a laser to make them light up. Sure enough, in cross section after cross section of a mouse’s tibia, they saw soft, blood-carrying tissue snaking through the bony architecture. And when they used yet another imaging technique — this one allowing them to reconstruct, in 3D, the cave-like world inside a mouse bone — they could see that the very skeleton had hollowed-out canals so that these capillaries could carry blood through.
If these canals wound through the bones of humans, too, Gunzer reasoned, then they should start pricking out blood during surgeries. He isn’t himself a doctor, so he went to see an orthopedic surgeon friend. “I said, ‘Hey, when you look at a naked human bone, do you see punctate bleeding?’ He said, ‘Yes, of course, we see it all the time. For us that’s a sign that the bone is still alive.’”
Cuando obtuvieron pequeñas muestras de hueso humano y usaron el mismo producto químico para hacerlo transparente, notaron que no había tantos capilares como en ratones, pero parecía que estaban allí.
That might help explain how immune cells could flood so quickly into the bloodstream — but it also has other implications. The channels in the bone through which these capillaries pass are gouged by osteoclasts, cells that naturally degrade bone so that our skeletons can remake themselves. When the researchers gave mice a common class of drugs often prescribed for osteoporosis, the fact that these drugs stopped osteoclasts in their tracks also meant that they couldn’t form new paths for capillaries. In other words, the drugs might increase bone density, but might lessen blood flow between the marrow and the exterior of the bone.
“It’s fantastic,” Komarova said of the potential for better understanding the workings — and side effects — of commonly prescribed drugs.
While Gunzer is excited about the possible applications of the research, part of the thrill was simply stumbling on something new when he thought everything had already been thoroughly explored and mapped. “At the time, I was absolutely not an expert in bone; that helps you see things with entirely innocent eyes, and that might allow you to see things that other people haven’t,” he said. “A lot of people are investigating bones, and none of them have seen these channels, maybe because they’ve been too long in the business.”
About the Author
Eric Boodman
General Assignment Reporter
Eric is a general assignment reporter.[email protected]@ericboodman
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