NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Vitamin D deficiency is often found in black men, and it may be "an important and easily modifiable" contributor to their higher risk of cancer when compared with whites, Boston-based clinicians report.

Dr. Edward Giovannucci, from the Channing Laboratory and the Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues examined whether cancer occurrence rates and deaths from cancer differed between black and white men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

From 1986 and 2002, a total of 99 out of 481 black men and 7019 out of 43,468 white men were diagnosed with cancer.

In analyses adjusted for multiple dietary, lifestyle, and medical risk factors for cancer, black men had a 32 percent higher risk than white men of developing any cancer and an 89 percent greater likelihood of dying from cancer, particularly from cancer of the digestive system cancer.

"We identified only vitamin D deficiency as a potentially relevant factor" in the higher cancer risk among blacks, note the researchers in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology -- Biomarkers and Prevention.

"Our results ... are noteworthy, and further study of this topic should be a high priority," Giovannucci and colleagues conclude.