A small gland in the throat known as the thymus may aid with fighting cancer and other causes of death, the Harvard Gazette reported Aug. 2.
Researchers from Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital studied data from 1,146 patients who had their thymus gland removed and compared it to those who did not and found that "the primary reason why the thymus has an impact on overall health seems to be as a way to protect against the development of cancer," they wrote.
After a five-year follow-up, those who had their thymus gland removed via thymectomy had a 9 percent death rate compared to just 5.2 percent of individuals who did not.
"The magnitude of death and cancer in patients who had undergone thymectomy was the biggest surprise for me," Kameron Kooshesh, MD, lead study author and an internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital told the Harvard Gazette. "The more we dug, the more we found: The results suggested to us that the lack of a thymus appears to perturb basic aspects of immune function."