Common Skin Diseases and Metabolic Syndrome: A Proinflammatory Chemokine Perspective

Skin diseases frequently coexist with other disorders, such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus, depression, psoriatic arthritis, and cardiovascular disease. Altered levels of distinct chemokines, like CCL5/RANTES, CXCL12/SDF-1a, CCL7/MCP-3, CCL2/MCP-1, CXCL1/GROa, and the eotaxin family, contribute to the development and/or exacerbation of inflammation, which is a common feature of numerous skin diseases as well as metabolic syndrome. The pathological and molecular connections between chronic inflammatory skin diseases and metabolic syndrome are increasingly recognized as being driven by shared inflammatory pathways, oxidative stress, and adipokine dysregulation. While systemic inflammation acts as a common thread, the precise mechanisms for some conditions remain partially understood. Nevertheless, the exact pathological and molecular connections between skin diseases (i.e., psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, pemphigus vulgaris, acute and chronic spontaneous urticaria, bullous pemphigoid, squamous cell carcinoma, alopecia areata, systemic sclerosis, discoid lupus erythematosus, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma) and metabolic syndrome are not yet fully understood. This narrative review summarizes the robust association between various chronic inflammatory skin diseases and metabolic syndrome in the context of pro-inflammatory chemokines.