In addition to being one of the first genetic susceptibility studies to comprehensively examine the association between VDR and seven other vitamin D pathway genes in relation to RCC risk, an additional strength of our study includes the use of HapMap data to tag genes of interest using high (80–90%) genomic coverage by tagging genomic regions, both upstream (20 kb) and downstream (10 kb) to reduce chance of false negative findings. Here, VDR is linked to renal cell carcinoma.