Cholestech Corporation Announces Medical Advisory Board.

Business Editors/Health & Medical Writers

HAYWARD, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--April 12, 2000

Cholestech Corporation (Nasdaq:CTEC), a leading provider of cholesterol diagnostic technology and screening services, announced today the formation of a Medical Advisory Board to advise the company on best practices in cardiovascular medicine, emerging issues in preventive cardiology, and medical judgement of related content for the Company's new Internet business unit, WellCheck.com(TM).

The members of Cholestech's Medical Advisory Board are:

Dr. Stephen P. Fortmann, M.D.
Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

Dr. Lori Mosca
Director of Preventive Cardiology Research and Education Programs,
University of Michigan Director of Research for the National Center of
Excellence in Women's Health

Dr. Thomas A. Pearson
Albert D. Kaiser Professor and Chair, Department of Community and
Preventive Medicine Professor of Medicine, University of Rochester

"We are extremely pleased to be able to work with physicians who have the backgrounds and practice leadership of Dr.s Fortmann, Mosca, and Pearson," said Mr. Warren E. Pinckert II, President and Chief Executive Officer. "They are among the leaders and thinkers helping to drive preventive cardiology and lipid management forward in today's healthcare arena. With their help, we will offer cardiovascular risk assessment and effective Internet tools to enable personal health management of cholesterol levels and other cardiovascular risk factors in locations that are convenient to the consumer. Cholestech is particularly pleased to be able to tap into such a wealth of patient experience, medical expertise, vision, and real-world know-how regarding American healthcare as we develop the WellCheck(TM) and WellCheck.com businesses."

Dr. Fortmann's principal research activity has concerned community wide prevention and control of cardiovascular disease; he served as project director for the Stanford Five-City Project beginning in 1979 and was principal investigator of this project from 1992 to its end in 1998. The Five-City Project was a long-term community trial testing the effectiveness of community wide health education on lowering cardiovascular disease risk, morbidity, and mortality. His other research interests include the epidemiology and control of cardiovascular and other chronic diseases, pharmacological interventions for smoking cessation, tobacco control policy, nutrition and nutrition education, blood pressure control, and lipid disorders. He was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford in 1983 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990. He is also an attending physician in the Stanford Program for Atheroscelerosis and Cardiovascular Therapies and in the Stanford Internal Medicine Clinic. In 1987 he became Deputy Director of the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention (SCRDP) and director of the CVD prevention training program. In January 1998 he was appointed Director of the SCRDP.

Dr. Fortmann is a Fellow and past Chair of the American Heart Association Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, and he is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Epidemiology, and the Society for Behavioral Medicine.

Dr. Mosca is an Associate Professor of Medicine (cardiology) at the University of Michigan Medical School. She received her M.D. from SUNY - Syracuse, and her M.P.H. and Ph.D. degrees in Epidemiology from Columbia University. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Syracuse and a fellowship in Preventive Cardiology at Columbia University. Her area of clinical expertise is preventive cardiology with an emphasis on management of lipid disorders. Her research focus is on the role of antioxidants and hormones in the prevention of heart disease. She is the Principal Investigator of the Women's Pooling Project, a national collaborative study designed to examine long-term cardiovascular risk in women, and serves on the executive committee for the Raloxifene Use for the Heart (RUTH). Dr. Mosca chaired the American Heart Association (AHA) Consensus Panel "Guide to Preventive Cardiology for Women," and chairs the AHA National Women's Heart Disease and Stroke Campaign. She also serves on the AHA National Board of Directors. Dr. Mosca is currently the recipient of a five-year research career award from the National Institute of Health.

Dr. Pearson is involved in large, multicenter studies of the implementation of preventive cardiology interventions in patients with coronary disease or at high risk for its development. He is currently the Principal Investigator for the American College of Cardiology Evaluation of Prevention Therapeutics Study (ACCEPT) and the Lipid Treatment Assessment Program, two large studies from multiple sites across the U.S. Dr. Pearson was recently awarded the Joseph Stokes III Award from the American Society of Preventive Cardiology for his work in this field.

Dr. Pearson is also involved with studies of diet and drug therapies, which affect blood cholesterol levels. He is Principal Investigator of the TARGET Study, a national study of 10,000 patients treated with the cholesterol-lowering drug, atorvastatin, and the Principal Investigator for the local study site of the Treatment to New Target (TNT) Study. Dr. Pearson was recently awarded one of the first five Nutrition Academic Awards of the National Heart Lipid Blood Institute, to establish a curriculum in nutrition education at the University of Rochester for medical students, nurses, interns, residents, and practicing physicians.

Dr. Pearson has examined international trends in cardiovascular disease and was one of the first to recognize the expanding epidemic of cardiovascular disease in developing countries. His work in this area has involved the World Bank, Institutes of Medicine, and International Heart Health Network.

Dr. Pearson has lectured and published extensively on the prevention of cardiovascular disease, including research at the patient, healthcare system, community, and public policy levels.

About WellCheck

One of Cholestech's three new business units, WellCheck will provide key face-to-face interaction with the consumer by bringing cholesterol testing to venues which are convenient to the general public. Earlier this year, Cholestech conducted a series of market pilot programs to explore the consumer's experience with the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System in the field. During the pilot, 7,500 people were tested at mass merchandising giant Wal-Mart, Walgreens' pharmacies, and Dominic's grocery stores. WellCheck was formed as the culmination of that research pilot. Starting in selected regions, and broadening its coverage through a combination of acquisition and internal growth, Cholestech plans to develop the first truly nationwide consumer testing service; bringing physicians, healthcare providers, and consumers together with the information they need to improve cardiovascular health, and other potentially life-threatening chronic conditions.

About WellCheck.com

As Cholestech developed its new strategy, it was immediately apparent how important the role of providing information to the consumer would be. During the eight years of Cholestech operations, the Company has shipped sufficient single-use, disposable cassettes to test nine and a half million people -- one of the broadest means of testing outside of the clinical laboratory. Cholestech estimates that close to three and a half million people may have been tested using the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System in the last twelve months alone. Managing this information on cardiovascular health, helping individuals identify and become aware of their risk of cardiovascular disease utilizing the data from the long established Framingham Study, and facilitating the flow of this information through the broad channel of the Internet is the goal of the new WellCheck.com business. Together with Diagnostic Products and WellCheck, WellCheck.com will provide personal health information directly to consumers and healthcare providers via the Internet.

About Diagnostic Products

The new Diagnostic Products business unit, Cholestech's traditional business, remains the core of Cholestech's new strategy. Beginning with the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System, Diagnostic Products will be even more focused on developing, manufacturing, and marketing products which support consumers' personal health goals. From the launch of the Company's new liver function test on the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System, to improvements in the quality and efficiency of the current products we manufacture; Diagnostic Products is focused on better testing technology. Diagnostic Products will help consumers to "know their numbers" with the same performance characteristics, including: precision, linearity, method comparison, and interfering substances compared with a predicate device.

About Cholestech

Cholestech is committed to helping people successfully improve their health. Working together, the Cholestech business units of WellCheck, WellCheck.com, and Diagnostic Products, can provide simple, accessible, and reliable personal health information to health care practitioners and directly to consumers in over 35 countries around the world. By offering efficient and economic diagnostic screening for cholesterol, blood sugar, and liver function, Cholestech hopes to help more people understand whether or not they face potentially serious health risks. Therapeutic monitoring options using the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System can help patients monitor their progress as they work with their health care provider to reduce their risk of cardiovascular and other diseases. Working together with health care providers, our goal is to ultimately enable people to lead longer, healthier, and more active lives.

Safe Harbor Statement of Cholestech Corporation under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This release may contain forward-looking statements based on our current expectations, estimates, and projections about our industry, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us. Words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "may," "will," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this release include statements regarding Cholestech's future key role in facilitating personal health management; Cholestech's development of the first nationwide consumer testing service; Cholestech's ability to manage cholesterol and other cardiovascular health information over the Internet; and any potential tangible benefits arising from the addition of a Medical Advisory Board. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefor our actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various factors.

Important factors that may cause our results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the risks inherent in acquisitions of technologies and businesses; integration issues; lack of experience in testing services; lack of experience in Internet businesses; the unproven nature of Internet-based health management; unanticipated expenditures; changing relationships with customers, suppliers, and strategic partners; potential contractual, intellectual property, or employment issues; experience in managing geographically diverse operations; and the risk that the anticipated benefits of any acquisition(s) are not realized; delays; the loss of a significant customer; the availability and pricing of competing products and services and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products and services; our ability to hire and retain key executives, technical personnel, and other employees in the numbers, with the capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans; the quality of our products; general economic conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address; and other factors.

Our recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss some of the important risk factors that may affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Cholestech undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. All such forward-looking statements are current only as of the date on which such statements were made.

Note to Editors: Cholestech L.D.X(R), WellCheck(TM), and WellCheck.com(TM) are registered trademarks of Cholestech Corporation. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. For more information about Cholestech and its products visit us on the web at www.cholestech.com