We often see Angelina Jolie grabbing headlines for her movies, her relationship with Brad Pitt and her charitable work. However, in May 2013, Jolie made international news when she announced her decision to have a double mastectomy to minimize her risk of getting breast cancer.
It seems that Jolie's announcement has really had a profound impact on women's healthcare. The number of women in the U.K. wanting to have genetic breast cancer tests has nearly doubled, according to a new study released on Sept. 19.
Researchers studied 21 clinics and regional genetic centers in Britain for the report in the journal Breast Cancer Research. They found that there were 4,847 referrals for testing in June and July 2013, the first and second months after Jolie wrote about her double mastectomy in a New York Times op-ed. This is compared to 1,981 referrals from the same period in 2012.
This kind of increase was exactly what Jolie had hoped to accomplish with her New York Times op-ed. "I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer," Jolie wrote. "It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options."
Jolie carries the BRAC1 gene, which greatly increases the risk of being diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer. Her mother Marcheline Betrand passed away in 2007 at the age of 56 after a nearly decade-long battle with ovarian cancer. About 12 percent of women will develop breast cancer and 1.4 percent will develop ovarian cancer some time in their lives, but women with the BRAC1 gene mutation have a 55 to 65 percent chance of getting breast cancer and 39 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer by the age of 70.
The authors of the study credit Jolie's image as a "glamorous and strong woman" and her loving relationship with Pitt as helping to encourage women to not be afraid to get tested. "This may have lessened patients' fears about a loss of sexual identity post-preventative surgery and encouraged those who had not previously engaged with health services to consider genetic testing," said researcher Gareth Evans of the charity Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention in a statement.
In 2012, there were nearly 1.7 million cases of breast cancer and 522,000 deaths worldwide, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer's GLOBOCAN project. It is estimated that in 2014, there will be 232,670 new cases of invasive breast cancer, 62,570 new cases of in situ breast cancer and 40,000 breast cancer deaths in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society. So clearly, Jolie's endorsement of genetic breast cancer tests could not have come at a better time.
