The overall economy added 243,000 jobs last month — with the health-care sector continuing to show strength — while the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%.
As the WSJ reports, that’s the lowest the jobless rate has been since Feb. 2009. (Here’s the full report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
The health-care industry added 30,900 jobs in January, following a revised increase of 17,600 jobs the previous month. (Originally the government reported a larger December gain of 22,600 jobs in the sector, as we reported.)
Data from the BLS gives a snapshot of job growth by facility rather than job function. For example, the report shows that hospitals added 12,700 jobs, but doesn’t say whether those were nursing, IT or cafeteria positions.
Ambulatory health-care services added 12,900 jobs as doctors’ offices, outpatient care centers and home-health services all saw growth.
Nursing-care facilities added 2,700 jobs, while the broader category of nursing and residential-care facilities overall gained 5,300 jobs in January.
Image: iStockphoto

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A Komen fundraising race from the fall.

It hasn’t been a great week for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the breast-cancer advocacy group known for its pink-ribbon fundraising efforts.
Today the group reversed a decision — made public only Tuesday — to end Planned Parenthood’s eligibility for grants. Critics had said Komen planned to cut funding to the group for breast exams and education under pressure from anti-abortion organizations; Komen denied that.

In a statement, Komen’s board and its founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, apologized “to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.” The statement continues:

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen.  We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood.  They were not.

Komen’s short-lived move to defund Planned Parenthood spurred controversy, to put it mildly. Komen’s public rationale for its action changed over the week: A spokeswoman originally told the Associated Press it had changed its criteria to end grants to any […]

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Medical Device Price Gap: A report from the Government Accountability Office finds that some hospitals pay thousands of dollars more than others for the very same medical device, the WSJ reports. The higher prices could affect Medicare spending, since payments to hospitals are in part based on the institutions’ costs, the paper says.
New Malaria-Death Estimate: A new calculation of malaria deaths published in the Lancet is about two times as big as the World Health Organization’s current estimate, the Washington Post reports. The report, which is expected to be controversial, agrees with the WHO that malaria deaths peaked in 2004 and are now on the decline. The two estimates diverge most widely when it comes to deaths in Africans aged five and older.
Nonprofit Controversy Continues: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg personally pledged $250,000 in matching funds to Planned Parenthood to make up for monies that will be lost when Susan G. Komen for the Cure stops most grants to the women’s health nonprofit’s affiliates for breast exams and education, the WSJ reports. Both groups say donations are up since Komen’s decision — which it says was prompted by several changes to its standards for grants — […]

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There are many mysteries when it comes to understanding Alzheimer’s disease, with one of the biggest questions centering on how the memory-robbing disease progresses.
Decades ago, researchers discovered that the damage starts in the same part of the brain in all patients and systematically moves on to affect nearby regions. It wasn’t clear, however, why this progression occurred. One intriguing theory was that the pathology “spreads” between neurons. But for years there wasn’t a good way of testing the hypothesis.
Now, two new studies conducted in mice, one published in PLoS ONE and the other in press at Neuron, offer evidence that the damage –  specifically the misfolding of a protein called tau –  is likely passed from one neuron to another.
The exact mechanism isn’t clear, but the researchers believe that somehow a flawed “template” for how tau should be folded gets released by one neuron and picked up by the next one, which then starts misfolding tau based on that new template, says Bradley Hyman, a Harvard neurology professor who is an author of the upcoming Neuron study.
Now, researchers can start figuring out how the errant message gets transmitted and picked up. Interrupting any step of this process could “plausibly” interrupt the progression of the […]

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Tobacco, alcohol … and sugar?
A new commentary published in Nature argues that just as the first two substances are regulated in various ways by government authorities, so should be sugar. While acknowledging that food, unlike alcohol and tobacco, is required for survival, the authors say taxes, zoning ordinances and even age limits for purchasing certain sugar-laden products are all appropriate remedies for what they see as a not-so-sweet problem.
The authors of the piece, Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, are all from the University of California, San Francisco. Lustig has been a particularly harsh (and longtime) critic of the impact of added sugars on health — here’s his widely viewed 2009 lecture on that topic. (Lustig was also a central character in a New York Times magazine piece on this subject last year.)
Note that they are talking about sugar added to foods. No one is arguing that we should spurn fruit, for example, because of the naturally occurring fructose.
“We believe attention should be turned to ‘added sugar,’ defined as any sweetener containing the molecule fructose that is added to food in processing,” the authors write. (And they argue the current dietary “bogeymen” — saturated fat and salt — deserve […]

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By Louise Radnofsky

The Obama administration is touting good news for seniors from the health-care overhaul law, pointing to $2.1 billion in discounts on prescription drugs for 3.6 million older consumers in 2011.
Part of the law was intended to fill the gap in prescription-drug coverage, the so-called doughnut hole, when Medicare beneficiaries have to to pay up to $4,550 out of pocket for drugs after their costs pass $2,840 for the year.
Under the law, drug companies have to offer discounts on brand-name and generic drugs for Medicare beneficiaries after they reach the gap. Discounts increase annually until 2020, when the hole is supposed to be filled entirely. In 2010, the first year when the discounts were in effect, seniors also got a $250 rebate check if they hit the doughnut hole.
The 2011 discounts — 50% on covered brand-name drugs and 7% on generic drugs — were worth an average of $631 per person who did reach the doughnut hole, the Department of Health and Human Services said.
Democrats have made closing the doughnut hole a priority in recent years and have tried to make the new provision a key element in their appeal to seniors to support the health-care overhaul law.
“Today’s good […]

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Some of Komen’s funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates went towards referrals for mammograms.

The controversy over the defunding of Planned Parenthood affiliates by breast-cancer group Susan G. Komen for the Cure is showing no signs of cooling off.
A spokeswoman for Komen, Leslie Aun, told the Associated Press — which broke the story Tuesday — that the charity was ending its grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates after adopting a policy prohibiting the funding of organizations that are under investigation by government authorities.
That would apply to Planned Parenthood because a Republican congressman, Cliff Stearns, is leading an inquiry into whether the group spent public funds on abortion services, the A.P. says.
Planned Parenthood responded by saying that Komen had caved to pressure from “anti- women’s health political organizations,” and that low-income women in underserved communities stand to be hurt by the end of the grants, which cover breast health education, screenings and referrals for mammograms.
Komen tried to quell criticism with a video, released late yesterday. In it, the group’s founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, says the decision was the result of a review of the group’s policies and procedures for making grants. “We are working to eliminate duplicative grants, freeing up more dollars […]

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As we all gather ’round the Super Bowl snack spread this Sunday, how worried should we be about the health consequences of the party foul known as double dipping?
We tackled that question as part of our “Is It True?” video series here at the Health Blog — you can see the video below.
The WSJ’s Christina Tsuei set out to find if, as Seinfeld’s George Costanza was told by a horrified party guest, that re-dipping a chip after you’ve already taken a bite is “like putting your whole mouth right in the dip.”
The answer is probably not — but it could be compared to sharing a kiss with your fellow dippers, according to an expert she spoke with. (The Health Blog has written about of the research discussed in the video.)
Watch the video and tell us your best strategies for avoiding the double dip.
And look here, here, here, here, here and here for our previous videos, on weight-loss and sleep, giving and health, Thanksgiving dinner and tiredness, smiling and mood, the freshman 15 and melatonin’s effects on sleep.
Have a suggestion for a future video topic? Please email us at healthblog@wsj.com or leave a comment below.

[…]

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As we all gather ’round the Super Bowl snack spread this Sunday, how worried should we be about the health consequences of the party foul known as double dipping?
We tackled that question as part of our “Is It True?” video series here at the Health Blog — you can see the video below.
The WSJ’s Christina Tsuei set out to find if, as Seinfeld’s George Costanza was told by a horrified party guest, that re-dipping a chip after you’ve already taken a bite is “like putting your whole mouth right in the dip.”
The answer is probably not — but it could be compared to sharing a kiss with your fellow dippers, according to an expert she spoke with. (The Health Blog has written about of the research discussed in the video.)
Watch the video and tell us your best strategies for avoiding the double dip.
And look here, here, here, here, here and here for our previous videos, on weight-loss and sleep, giving and health, Thanksgiving dinner and tiredness, smiling and mood, the freshman 15 and melatonin’s effects on sleep.
Have a suggestion for a future video topic? Please email us at healthblog@wsj.com or leave a comment below.

[…]

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Birth-Control Recall: Pfizer has recalled about a million packs of birth-control pills on concerns that incorrect packaging could lead to unplanned pregnancies, but says it believes only 30 packs actually had the troublesome glitches, the WSJ reports. Pfizer has identified three production problems that could permit pills to be placed incorrectly in the packs and go undetected. It’s not clear how many pills have already been used and how many are still in medicine cabinets, the paper says.
Regulating Sugar?: A commentary published in Nature calls for sugar added to foods to be regulated, using the taxes and limited availability of tobacco and alcohol as a model, WebMD reports. Commentary author Robert Lustig, of the University of California, San Francisco, says excess sugar is linked to health problems, while the Sugar Association disputes that sugar intake causes disease. The FDA says it is not reconsidering sugar’s current regulatory status as a “generally recognized as safe” product, WebMD reports.
Device Pact: Medical-device firms will pay the FDA $595 million over five years under the tentative terms of a new user-fee agreement, the WSJ reports. The FDA will add more full-time employees to consider medical-device applications and will have concrete goals […]

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