Skin Manifestations of Insulin Resistance: From a Biochemical Stance to a Clinical Diagnosis and Management.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review synthesizing mechanisms and clinical observations without systematic pooling or primary data
PubMed 27921251 · doi:10.1007/s13555-016-0160-3
What was done
The authors conducted a narrative literature search across PubMed (MEDLINE), Ovid EMBASE, Web of Science, and Scopus to review the biochemical mechanisms, diagnosis, and management of dermatologic signs of insulin resistance.
What was found
The abstract reports broad contextual estimates (over 1.9 billion adults overweight, ~600 million obese, ~382 million with diabetes; insulin resistance present in 70–80% of individuals with obesity and virtually all individuals with type 2 diabetes). No quantitative diagnostic accuracy metrics (such as sensitivity, specificity, or predictive values) for individual skin findings are reported in the abstract.
Why it matters
Because standard diagnostic tests like the euglycemic insulin clamp are impractical in routine practice and surrogate lab indexes have limitations, recognizable skin manifestations provide an accessible clinical trigger for metabolic evaluation and earlier intervention.
Limits
This is a narrative review with no original human data or meta-analytic pooling. The abstract does not provide search dates, study selection criteria, sample sizes, or quantitative test performance characteristics.
Cited by
- supports Brown skin tags in areas such as armpits and the neck are early signs of insulin resistance.