Get to know the omentum: The apron of fat that protects your abdomen
The omentum's immune functions come from groups of small, white filters located among the fat cells. Anatomists first discovered these cell clusters in rabbits around 1874, giving them the name milky spots. Recent research has shown that they aid the omentum by collecting information about the health of the abdominal cavity. While the size and shape of the omentum varies, milky spots speckle the entire tissue and serve as a filter for surrounding fluid. "The fluid around the abdominal organs doesn't just sit there, it circulates through the milky spots," says Troy D. Randall, a clinical immunologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who co-wrote the review with postdoctoral fellow Selene Meza-Perez. "Milky spots collect cells, antigens, and bacteria before deciding what's going to happen immunologically." The milky spots' analyses cause the omentum to respond immunologically by releasing inflammatory molecules, tolerating the presenc...