Published in:
Open Access
01-12-2015 | Letter
Longer term effects of the Angelina Jolie effect: increased risk-reducing mastectomy rates in BRCA carriers and other high-risk women
Authors:
D. Gareth Evans, Julie Wisely, Tara Clancy, Fiona Lalloo, Mary Wilson, Richard Johnson, Jonathon Duncan, Lester Barr, Ashu Gandhi, Anthony Howell
Published in:
Breast Cancer Research
|
Issue 1/2015
Login to get access
Excerpt
In May 2013 the actress Angelina Jolie informed the press that she had undergone bilateral risk-reducing mastectomy (BRRM) because she carried a maternally inherited pathogenic
BRCA1 mutation. This decision created huge publicity worldwide [
1] and led to enormous interest in hereditary breast cancer/genetic testing. Here we comment on our recently published research article in
Breast Cancer Research and provide more recent observations. This reported a 2.5-fold increase in referrals of UK women with family histories of breast cancer 3–4 months following Ms Jolie’s revelation [
1]. We also highlighted increased interest in BRRM; however, as it takes 9–12 months from initial BRRM enquiries to the operative procedure, we can now report a similar 2.5-fold increase in uptake of BRRM in the 6–24 months following this. …
