Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Currently submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research

Date Submitted: Feb 14, 2026

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Cutaneous Manifestation in Neurological Disorders: A Systematic Review of Observational Studies

  • Sara Alghamdi; 
  • Mohammed Alahmadi; 
  • Atheer Aldayhani; 
  • Ghadah Algoraini; 
  • Reenad Alharbi; 
  • Fatimah Albenmousa; 
  • Sarah Albenmousa; 
  • Mohammed Almashali

ABSTRACT

Background:

Cutaneous manifestations are increasingly recognized as serving as important indicators of several neurological disorders because of the shared mechanisms between the two conditions. This systematic review aims to synthesize the available observational evidence on cutaneous manifestations related to neurological disorders.

Objective:

To systematically review and synthesize observational evidence on the relationship between cutaneous manifestations and neurological disorders, highlighting their role as early indicators of underlying neurological pathology.

Methods:

This is a systematic review conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines across different electronic databases from inception up to 2023. Study selection, extraction of data, and quality assessment were performed independently by two reviewers.

Results:

The review included 30 studies published between 1964 and 2023, including a total sample of 9472 (1172 cases and 8300 controls), mostly as case reports, and representing diverse geographic regions. Pigmentary disorders were the most common reported cutaneous manifestations (N=17 studies), particularly among patients with congenital neurocutaneous disorders. Most of the cutaneous symptoms were reported before or at the onset of neurological symptoms. The shared embryological origins, neural crest cell migration defects, immune-mediated processes, or chronic inflammatory pathways were the most proposed pathophysiological mechanisms related to the two conditions.

Conclusions:

This review indicated that cutaneous manifestations are common and clinically relevant across different neurological disorders and frequently serve as early markers of underlying neurological pathology.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Alghamdi S, Alahmadi M, Aldayhani A, Algoraini G, Alharbi R, Albenmousa F, Albenmousa S, Almashali M

Cutaneous Manifestation in Neurological Disorders: A Systematic Review of Observational Studies

JMIR Preprints. 14/02/2026:93540

DOI: 10.2196/preprints.93540

URL: https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/93540

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.