Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Skin tags (acrochordons) are a recognised feature of insulin resistance, but the extent to which they predict an adverse metabolic profile or the response to lifestyle modification in severely obese adults is not known.

Aims: We sought to quantify prospectively differences in anthropometric and metabolic characteristics in severely obese adults with acrochordons vs those without acrochordons, and to determine whether the presence of acrochordons predicted how well bariatric patients respond to an 8-week structured lifestyle programme.

Methods: Weight, height, blood pressure, fasting glucose, and lipid profiles and a detailed dermatological assessment were conducted in a cohort of bariatric patients undergoing a structured lifestyle modification programme. Baseline differences between those with and without acrochordons were measured using a two-sample t-test, while differences in the response to the lifestyle intervention were quantified using linear regression.

Results: 100 bariatric patients (mean age 50±11.4 years, 31% males) were enrolled. There was a non-significant trend to those with acrochordons being heavier (weight 131.2±26.6 kg vs 121.8±15.3 kg, P=0.06) but also taller, with lower BMI (46.1±7.8 kg/m² vs 47.3±6.4 kg/m², P=0.53). They had higher HbA1c and systolic blood pressure (137.6±15.5 mmHg vs 124.4±9.1 mmHg, P<0.001), as expected. The intervention led to improvements in fitness and adiposity overall, but these improvements were no different in those with compared to those without acrochordons.

Discussion: In severely obese adults, acrochordons are an important marker of metabolic adversity but do not seem to predict the response to a lifestyle modification-programme.

Disclosure: This project was funded by Diabetes Care West, the Diabetes Charity for the West of Ireland.