Background Patients with advanced cancer often present with malnutrition.Globally,minority populations frequently suffer from higher rates of malnutrition than the majority group.It was unknown whether the nutritional status of cancer patients is different between ethicality groups (i.e.Uyghur and Han) in China.Methods A total of 251 Uyghur cancer patients were enrolled from the Xinjiang Kashgar First People\'s Hospital in the INSCOC Program.The Han patients were 1 ∶1 matched to Uyghur patients by age,gender and type of cancer from 72 hospitals around China in INSCOC Program.The nutritional risk and nutritional status were assessed using the Nutrition Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002) and Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA),respectively.Then,the functional status of cancer patients was determined based on the Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS).Results The incidence of an abnormal NRS-2002 (≥ 3),PG-SGA (≥ 4),and KPS (≤ 70) was significantly different (86.1％ vs 59.0％,70.5％ vs 27.5％,and 18.7％ vs 4.0％,respectively P ＜ 0.05).The abnormal rate of laboratory indicators in Uyghur cancer patients was significantly higher than that in Han cancer patients,including total protein,albumin,serum total bilirubin,direct bilirubin,HDL-C,white blood cell,lymphocyte,red blood cell,and platelet (all P ＜ 0.05).The abnormal rates of TSF,HGS and CC were significantly higher than that of Han nationality patients (17.5％ vs 9.7％,39.6％ vs 19.6％,29.1％ vs 15.2％,P ＜ 0.001).The nutritional support rate of Uyghur patients was lower than that of Han patients (0％ vs 16.3％).After adjusting for potential risk factors,malnutrition was associated with gender (female,OR =0.35,95％ CI=0.13-0.92,P =0.034),age (＞ 60 years,OR =5.32,95％ CI=1.46-19.41,P =0.011),cancer type(gastroesophageal tumor,OR =33.62,95％ CI =3.42-330.67,P =0.003),and treatment methods (received radical tumor resection,OR =5.78,95％ CI =1.45-23.08,P =0.008;received radiotherapy or chemotherapy:OR =7.69,95％CI =2.27-26.04,P ＜ 0.001).Conclusions The nutritional status of Uyghur cancer patients is worse than that of Han patients and the Uyghur patients with poor nutritional status lack the necessary nutritional support.