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From Wikipedia: "The total fluid volume of the interstitium during health is about 20% of body weight". Wow. How could we possibly have missed this? Medical re

• Arnavion 6y ago
  Putting aside your insult to medical researchers, it's not that they couldn't account for 20% of body weight. They knew there was fluid around cells, but the tissue sampling method would not preserve it so they couldn't inspect it. With the new sampling method they could see the structure, and realized these are more like connected spaces filled with fluid rather than small individual pockets. >Although researchers already knew that there is fluid between individual cells, the idea of a larger, connected interstitium — in which there are fluid-filled spaces within tissues — had been described only vaguely in the literature, Theise said. The new study, he said, expands the concept of the interstitium by showing these structured, fluid-filled spaces within tissues, and is the first to define the interstitium as an organ in and of itself.