Scientists Just Discovered a Mysterious Organ Lurking in The Centre of The Human Head - ScienceAlert

The tubarial glands structure, indicated by blue arrows, alongside other major salivary glands in orange. .

"People have three sets of large salivary glands, but not there," explains radiation oncologist Wouter Vogel from the Netherlands Cancer Institute.

"As far as we knew, the only salivary or mucous glands in the nasopharynx are microscopically small, and up to 1,000 are evenly spread out throughout the mucosa.

These tubarial glands were seen to exist in the PSMA PET/CT scans of all the 100 patients examined in the study, and physical investigations of two cadavers – one male and one female – also showed the mysterious bilateral structure, revealing macroscopically visible draining duct openings towards the nasopharyngeal wall.

While the team concedes that additional research on a larger, more diverse cohort will be needed to validate their findings, they say the discovery gives us another target to avoid during radiation treatments for patients with cancer, as salivary glands are highly susceptible to damage from the therapy