Mast cells in skin tags / Sara Bahaa_ElDin Mahmoud Mansour ; Supervised Hesham Abd El Moaty Zaher , Ahmed Mohamed Yehia Elhennawy , Omar Soliman El Safouri

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty Of Medicine - Department Of Dermatology and Venerology

Skin tags are benign connective tissue tumors of the dermis of unknown etiologyType 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity are associated with insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemiaHyperinsulinemia may favor skin tags development through activation of insulin - like growth factor I receptors on the surface of fibroblasts and stimulation of epidermal proliferationMast cells play an important role in different conditions including tumors and tissue fibrosisThey produce a number of multifunctional cytokines which stimulate fibroblast and keratinocyte proliferationThe aim of this work is to evaluate the role of mast cells in skin tags of diabetic and non - diabetic patientsThirty patients (15 diabetic and 15 non - diabetic) were the subject of our studyThe clinical data were collected , biopsies were taken from large , small skin tags and adjacent normal skinStaining with toluidine blue and mast cell count was doneOur results showed an increase in mast cell count in all skin tags examined in comparison to adjacent normal skin suggesting an important role of mast cells in the pathogenesis of skin tagsThere was no significant difference between mast cell count in skin tags in the non diabetic and diabetic groupsThis implies that mast cells play an important role in the pathogenesis of skin tags in addition to the role played by insulinThere were no similar studies in the literature to compare with our results

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