Skin tags: what causes them, whether they signal anything, and can you remove them

Skin tags — doctors call them acrochordons — are the small, soft, often stalk-like flaps of skin that appear where skin rubs against skin: the neck, the eyelids, the armpits, under the breasts and in the groin [s1]. The reassuring headline is that they are benign. They are not warts, they are not contagious, and they do not turn into cancer. The more interesting question is not whether they are dangerous — they are not — but whether they are telling you something about the rest of your body, and what to do if you simply want them gone.

What causes them

Skin tags form where friction and skin folds meet, which is why they are commoner in areas that rub and in people carrying more weight. Beyond mechanical rubbing, the leading explanation is metabolic. The condition sits within a cluster of skin changes that dermatologists increasingly treat as visible markers of what is happening in the body's metabolism. A 2026 review describing the skin as an active metabolic organ concluded that acanthosis nigricans and multiple acrochordons are consistently associated with insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease [s3]. In plain terms: high insulin levels appear to encourage the skin to grow these little tags, which is why they often cluster in people with, or heading towards, type 2 diabetes.

Do they signal diabetes? The evidence is mixed

This is where the story gets more careful. A 2025 comparative study of 150 people with skin tags, matched against people without them, found a statistically significant relationship between skin tags and diabetes mellitus (p = 0.0073), and calculated an odds ratio of 1.89 — meaning someone with skin tags had roughly 1.8 times the odds of having diabetes as someone without them [s1]. The same study found the duration of the skin tags tracked with the duration of diabetes [s1]. On that basis the authors argued skin tags can act as an early marker of impaired carbohydrate metabolism [s1].

But a single association is not the whole picture. A 2026 sub-study of the PREVIEW cohort took 191 adults who were overweight or obese — 151 with prediabetes and 40 without — and examined their skin in a standardised way [s2]. It found that the prevalence of skin tags did not differ between those with and without prediabetes, and that skin tag counts were not associated with body weight or body mass index [s2]. In other words, once everyone in the group already carried excess weight, skin tags no longer distinguished who had early blood-sugar problems.

The sensible reading of both studies together: skin tags are loosely tied to metabolic health, and a sudden crop of new ones is a reasonable prompt to get blood sugar, weight and lipids checked — but they are neither a reliable test for diabetes nor a reason to panic. They are a nudge, not a diagnosis.

Can you remove them — and should you?

Medically, you rarely need to. Because skin tags are harmless, removal is a cosmetic choice or a comfort measure when one catches on jewellery, clothing or a razor and becomes sore. There is no evidence-backed cream, oil or patch that makes them reliably disappear, and the marketed home remedies are not supported by good trials.

When removal is wanted, it is a job for a clinician, not the bathroom. Doctors use quick physical methods — freezing (cryotherapy), snipping the tag off at the base, or burning it off with electrocautery. Done properly these are minor procedures. The reason not to do it yourself is twofold. First, misdiagnosis: several more serious growths can masquerade as an innocent tag, and a professional can tell the difference before anything is cut. Second, the practical risks of home removal — bleeding, infection and scarring — are real, especially for tags near the eye. Tying a tag off with thread or cutting it with scissors is exactly the kind of thing that turns a harmless lump into an infected wound.

See a doctor rather than removing anything yourself if a "skin tag" bleeds, changes colour, grows, hurts, has an irregular surface, or has appeared suddenly and in numbers — those features can point to something other than a benign acrochordon and deserve a proper look. A rapid new crop of tags is also a fair reason to ask for a metabolic check.

This article is informational and is not medical advice.

Sources

• [s1] A Clinico-Morphological Study of Acrochordons and the Association With Diabetes Mellitus — Cureus, 5 February 2025. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.78549
• [s2] Differentiating obesity with and without prediabetes through skin findings: results from PREVIEW sub-study — Frontiers in Endocrinology, 1 April 2026. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2026.1796607
• [s3] Skin as a Metabolic Organ: Dermatologic Markers of Morbid Obesity and Their Role in Risk Stratification — Diagnostics, 27 April 2026. https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics16091314