Jul 22, 2015 12:11 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Angelina Jolie influenced many women to seek out genetic testing to determine if they are at risk for breast cancer, The Daily News & Analysis reported. 

The Oscar-winning actress received widespread media attention in 2013 when she told the public that she'd tested positive for BRCA1, a gene associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers, and subsequently had a double mastectomy.

"Some worried that that her story would prompt unnecessary genetic tests and requests for prophylactic surgeries," Kami Kosenko, lead author of the study, told medicalresearch.com. "These concerns served as the basis for a Time magazine article, entitled "The Angelina Effect," in which the authors hypothesized that her story would have a profound impact on the general public. Anecdotal evidence supports Time magazine's hypothesis, but we lack empirical tests of the Angelina effect. So, we designed a study to how Angelina's announcement affected women's intentions to engage in genetic testing for BRCA1."

For the study, researchers asked 356 people from across the United States completed the questionnaire, of which 295 were aware of Jolie's announcement.

Of the 229 female study participants, researchers found that 30 percent intended to get tested to see if they carried the BRCA1 gene, with 23 percent saying they would probably get tested and 7 percent saying they would definitely get tested.

"Women who identified more strongly with Jolie were more likely to intend to get the genetic testing regardless of whether they had a family history of cancer than women who did have a family history of cancer but did not identify with Jolie," Kosenko said. "The same was true of women who felt they had some sort of parasocial relationship with Jolie, meaning they viewed her as a friend. This means that Jolie's speaking out definitely had an impact."

The findings suggest that a celebrity's impact depends in part on the extent to which the public identifies with the celebrity. In other words, there appears to be something about particular celebrities that engenders more public interest and concern.

"This indicates that health practitioners and advocates may want to consider how relatable a celebrity is with the target audience when searching for a celebrity spokesperson," Kosenko said.

The findings are detailed in the Journal of Health Communication.

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