DHAKA: Breast cancer charities have reported a four-fold surge in women enquiring about having their breasts removed since Angelina Jolie announced she’d had the operation to lessen her risk of developing the disease.

Figures from Cancer Research UK show the numbers of calls to its helpline have increased four-fold while there has been a similar rise in visits to its website.

The actress revealed she’d had a double mastectomy in May after learning she carried a faulty gene that gave her an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer.

Miss Jolie, 37, said she’d made the decision for the sake of her eight children having witnessed her own mother Marcheline Betrand lose a six-year battle against the illness.

Figures compiled by Cancer Research UK show the number of calls to its helpline regarding a family history to breast cancer rose from 13 in April to 88 for May.

And a total of 15,920 people went on pages of its website containing information about breast cancer the day of Miss Jolie’s announcement, the 14th of May.

On the same day the previous month just 3,659 people looked at those pages - a four-fold rise - and just 4,796 visited them the day before.

Dr Kat Arney, from Cancer Research UK said: ‘We now know about these genes, we know how to test for them and we can give women options for what to do.

‘In some cases women will decide to have the surgery and that will reduce the risk by a very significant amount.

‘There are other options too, there’s screening, there are drugs they can take to reduce their risk.’

Fewer than 1 per cent of women carry the faulty BRCA1 gene - like Miss Jolie - or BRCA2 gene, which is very similar.

These genes increase the risk of developing breast cancer to between 40 and 90 per cent and they are also linked to ovarian cancer.

Women with a family history of breast cancer are advised to undergo genetic screening which is done via a blood test.

Depending on the result and their risk, women may decide to have both breasts removed and their ovaries which will leave them infertile.

They can also take drugs to lessen the risk including Tamoxifen which works by suppressing oestrogen, a hormone that triggers tumour growth, or by undergoing very regular checks.

Teresa Hoskins, a breast cancer nurse at the Brighton and Sussex University Hospital said: ‘It’s a very big decision. It can affect relationships, how you feel about your body image.

Miss Jolie, who is married to Brad Pitt, 49, is expected to undergo a oophorectomy and hysterectomy to remove her ovaries and womb to lessen the risk of ovarian cancer.

Her mother died from this illness and Miss Jolie’s risk is believed to be about 50 per cent.

She is believed to have had the double mastectomy in February after a test in December showed she had the faulty gene.

But writing in the New York Times in May, she said the health crisis had brought her closer to her husband.

She said: ‘We knew that this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. And it has.’

Source: dailymail
BDST: 1524 HRS, SEP 25, 2013
AKA/MZR