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With reverence to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, The Huffington Post recently published a feature on noteworthy entertainers who, at one point in their lives, received affirmative blood testing for breast tumors.

Proving that women of all ages could potentially be among the more than 200,000 people who the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say could receive blood testing confirming breast tumors each year, The Huffington Post reports that sitcom actresses Christina Applegate and Maura Tierney have both battled breast cancer. Tierney is under 50 years old, while Applegate has not yet turned 40.

Other famous breast cancer patients listed by the news source include aspiring First Lady Ann Romney, funny-woman Wanda Sykes, Grammy award-winner Olivia Newton-John and British songstress Kylie Minogue.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that unfamiliar lumps found in breasts, swelling, irritation, dimpling, flaky skin, pain in the nipple area and nipple discharge are all signs that women should visit their doctors for an examination. According to the CDC, more than 40,000 women a year succumb to breast cancer.

Individuals who have undergone blood tests that detected biomarkers indicating the presence of breast cancer tumors could have a new treatment option related to drugs originally designed for people whose STD tests came out positive for HIV, according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Previous studies have shown the drug, Nelfinavir, which inhibits a type of protein in patients who have taken HIV-confirming STD tests, can help reduce the expansion of some types of cancers. However, researchers say their experiments on mice are the first to demonstrate its implications for patients whose blood tests for breast cancer brought up unfortunate results.

"With a relatively low toxicity profile and much available information on its drug-drug interactions and on pharmacokinetics, Nelfinavir is ready for clinical testing in HER2 breast cancer patients," wrote the study authors, before noting that their findings have "important implications in the development of Nelfinavir and its analogs as new anticancer agents."

This is not the only recent study showing that medications for HIV could also be used to treat breast cancer. In July, scientists at Thomas Jefferson University said HIV drugs helped treat patients with triple negative breast cancer, which is particularly difficult to survive, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

A recent study shows that high levels of a certain satiation hormone called proneurotensin, found in the gastrointestinal system, could be linked to an increased probability of receiving positive blood tests for diabetes or breast cancer, and may even make the chances of a heart attack more likely.

Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, this study compiles examinations of blood samples collected over several years from more than 4,500 individuals participating in the Swedish population study Malmo Diet and Cancer.

"It was surprising to find such a clear link to the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease as well as to breast cancer," said Olle Melander of the Department of Clinical Sciences at Lund University. "Obesity is a common risk factor for all three conditions, but the connection with proneurotensin is not explained by obesity or other known risk factors."

HealthDay News spoke with Melander in a follow-up report, and the study's primary author told the news source that the correlation between higher-than-average amounts of proneurotensin and higher chances of unfortunate outcomes from blood tests applied to women, but not men.