This arti?cle orig?i?nally appeared on?MSNBC
African-Americans are 25 per?cent more likely to die from can?cer than white Amer?i?cans are, and the rea?sons are numer?ous, includ?ing lower socio-economic sta?tus, poorer access to health care, and the can?cer diag?no?sis com?ing at later, more deadly stages.
Still, health experts say these fac?tors can?not fully explain the extent of dis?par?i?ties in sur?vival for?the most com?mon can?cers, such as breast, lung, colon and prostate cancers.
A paper pub?lished in the cur?rent issue of the jour?nal Dermato-Endocrinology points the fin?ger at a seem?ingly obvi?ous but over?looked cul?prit: the?sun.
The researchers? the?ory is that, in north?ern lat?i?tudes, the dark skin of African-Americans can?not absorb enough sun?light to gen?er?ate ade?quate amounts of vit?a?min D, which is often called the ?sun?shine vit?a?min.? The body uses ultra?vi?o?let rays from the sun to man?u?fac?ture vit?a?min D in the inner lay?ers of the?skin.
Vit?a?min D is needed for strong bones; doc?tors nearly 100 years ago asso?ci?ated a lack of ade?quate sun expo?sure with?rick?ets?among child labor?ers, exem?pli?fied by bowed legs. Recent stud?ies also have shown that low lev?els of vit?a?min D in the blood seem to con?tribute to a weak immune sys?tem and a host of dis?eases, such as can?cer and mul?ti?ple scle?ro?sis. [?Info?graphic: The Power of Vit?a?min D?]
This lack of vit?a?min D could com?pletely fill in the health dis?par?ity gap for can?cer sur?vival between white and black Amer?i?cans, the researchers said.
Pre?vi?ous work by geneti?cist Rick Kit?tles at the Uni?ver?sity of Chicago sug?gests that upwards of 75 per?cent of African-Americans are?defi?cient in vit?a?min D. Kit?tles says that African-Americans liv?ing north of the 37th par?al?lel ? just about any?place north of cen?tral Cal?i?for?nia, Texas, Ten?nessee or North Car?olina ? will have dif?fi?culty through most of the year absorb?ing enough sun?light to make vit?a?min D, because of the low angle of the rays reach?ing the Earth?s surface.
Given this largely estab?lished fact, researchers Alan Peiris of East Ten?nessee State Uni?ver?sity and William Grant of the Sun?light, Nutri?tion and Health Research Cen?ter in San Fran?cisco set out to look for a cor?re?la?tion between vit?a?min D and can?cer death dis?par?i?ties. (In past research, Grant and a col?league sug?gested low lev?els of ultraviolet-B rays in Aus?tria, paired with Mozart?s noc?tur?nal habits, may have led to?vit?a?min D defi?ciency in the com?poser, who died at the age of?35.)
What they found in the new study is pre?lim?i?nary but war?rants fur?ther inves?ti?ga?tion, they said. Rely?ing solely on a sci?en?tific lit?er?a?ture review, the researchers found that low vit?a?min D is inde?pen?dently asso?ci?ated with each of the can?cer types for which an unex?plained health dis?par?ity exists between African-Americans and white Americans.
Specif?i?cally, they found lin?ger?ing dis?par?i?ties for 13 types of can?cer after account?ing for socioe?co?nomic sta?tus, stage at diag?no?sis, and treat?ment: blad?der, breast, colon, endome?trial, lung, ovar?ian, pan?cre?atic, prostate, rec?tal, tes?tic?u?lar, and vagi?nal can?cer; Hodgkin?s lym?phoma; and melanoma. For each one, there is a vitamin-D connection.
Read more on?MSNBC
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