Jolie has ovaries removed to avoid cancer risk

Two years after a double mastectomy, actress Angelina Jolie has had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to avoid the risk of ovarian cancer, a move cancer experts described as courageous and influential.

The movie director and philanthropist, who is the wife of actor Brad Pitt and the mother of six children, said in a column in the New York Times on Tuesday that she had the surgery last week after blood tests showed what could have been early signs of the disease.

Jolie, 39, carries a mutation in the BRCA1 gene that increases her risk for breast and ovarian cancer.