Home > Community > Is there a surface or body cavity that does not have epithelium?
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Is there a surface or body cavity that does not have epithelium?

Affan Khadir  Follow

Short answer
Edit with credits to anongoodnurse: As far as I know, every bodily surface and cavity is covered by epithelia.

Background
Epithelial tissue is a sheet of cells that covers a body surface or lines a body cavity. There are two types of epithelium in the human body:

  • Covering and lining epithelium forms the outer layer of the skin; lines open cavities of the digestive and respiratory systems; covers the walls of organs of the closed ventral body cavity.
  • Glandular epithelium surrounds glandular tissue.

Hence, the entire the bodily surface is covered by some sort of epithelium. Even the eye is covered with squamous epithelia (thanks to anongoodnurse for pointing this out).

And while acknowledging that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I believe that there is no surface on, or cavity in the body not lined with epithelium.

epithelium
Fig. 1. Epithelial lining of bodily surfaces. source: Ternopil State Medical University

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Jecinta Wangare  Follow
I wonder if there is any body cavity which is not connected with the outside of body and also it doesn't have epithelium.More
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Farooque Ahmed Janjhi  Follow
@SepehrM Depends on your definitions of "cavity" and "connected", I guess. I mean, would the ventricles of the brain count? They're full of CSF but typically described as cavities, and connected to each other but not to the outside (although this wouldn't answer your question directly, since they have epithelium).More
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