Angelina Jolie’s Aunt Loses Battle Against Breast Cancer, Dies at 61

Angelina Jolie's aunt died of breast cancer Sunday, just two weeks after Angelina Jolie announced about undergoing preventive double mastectomy .

Sixty-one-year-old Debbie Martin was the younger sister of Jolie's mother, who died of ovarian cancer in 2007. Like Jolie, Martin, too, had the same defective BRCA1 gene. However, the family did not know about this until her cancer diagnosis in 2004.

"Had we known, we certainly would have done exactly what Angelina did," Ron Martin, Debbie's husband, told The Associated Press. He said that after the cancer diagnosis, Debbie had her ovaries removed as a preventive measure as she was also at a higher risk of getting ovarian cancer.

"Angelina has been in touch throughout the week and her brother Jamie has been with us, giving his support day by day," Ron told E! News, which first reported Debbie's death. "...Although Angie is not able to come right now she had sent her love and support which was very nice," he said. Ron also said that Debbie and he were proud of the actress' decision of undergoing mastectomy.

The Academy Award-winning actress recently went public with her news of having done preventive double mastectomy to avoid the cancer. The death of her mother due to ovarian cancer prompted Jolie to take the decision, she wrote in her The New York Times Op-Ed. She stated that doctors told her she had 87 percent chance of getting breast cancer and 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

After undergoing mastectomy, Jolie said, her chances of developing breast cancer dropped to 5 percent. "I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer," she wrote.

Statistics released by the World Health Organisation reveal that around 458,000 people die every year due to breast cancer. Like Jolie, around one in 300 to one in 500 women carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation.

Although, ovarian cancer accounts for 3 percent of cancers in women, it is the fifth leading cause of cancer -related deaths among them. According to the American Cancer Society, around 22,240 cases of ovarian cancer will be diagnosed and 14,030 women will die due to the cancer in 2013 in the U.S.