‘Angelina effect’: When Jolie talked about her breasts, women listened

Angelina Jolie’s public revelation about having risky mutations in a gene related to breast cancer sent DNA screening referrals through the roof, at least in the U.K., a new study suggests.

The “Angelina effect” persisted for many months as many more women got genetic tests for the presence of a version of the BRCA1 gene that sharply raises the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, according to the study, published Thursday in the journal Breast Cancer Research.