Project ImPACT:Hyperlipidemia Final Results Announced With the Cholestech L.D.X System.

Business Editors/Health & Medical Writers

HAYWARD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 14, 2000

90 Percent of Patients Stay on Medication,

62.5 Percent Achieve and Maintain Cholesterol Goals

Cholestech Corporation (Nasdaq:CTEC) announced today that final results of "Project ImPACT:Hyperlipidemia," released at the American Pharmaceutical Association's 147th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., and in the March/April 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association states that the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System was an integral part in helping participating health care providers successfully manage patients with cholesterol disorders achieve optimal results.

Directed by the APhA Foundation, and funded through an unrestricted educational grant from Merck Human Health (NYSE:MRK) and Cholestech, Project ImPACT:Hyperlipidemia involved 397 patients, 26 pharmacy practice sites in 12 states, and over 60 pharmacists. It was designed to demonstrate how pharmacists who act as disease state managers for patients with high cholesterol or lipid disorders can Improve Persistence And Compliance with Therapy (ImPACT), working in collaboration with the patient's physician.

The project's final results, based on 24 months of data, demonstrate that monitoring lipid levels at regular intervals, and with healthcare provider collaboration, increased rates for persistence and compliance with medication therapy to 93.6 percent and 90.1 percent respectively. In addition, the project found that 62.5 percent of these patients had reached and were maintained at their National Cholesterol Education Panel's (NCEP) cholesterol goals. These results represent a twofold to fourfold improvement when compared to historical findings.

To put the project's success rate in perspective, historical studies have indicated a more than 70 percent drop in compliance in lipid lowering drug therapies within the first 12 months of therapy initiation, resulting in only 30 percent compliance, and as low as 8 percent of NCEP goal achievement. In consumer terms, this translates to a 70 percent drop-out rate for people who start a lipid lowering therapy, and a 92 percent failure rate of people attempting to reach their cholesterol goal.

Participating physician, Dr. Shane Kraus of Family Practice Specialists in Richmond, Va., says that, "An important component of Project ImPACT:Hyperlipidemia was the identification of patients in need of lipid management. The Cholestech L.D.X(R) technology was instrumental in screening, monitoring and providing timely feedback to the patients and their physicians about patient progress in lowering cholesterol. When the pharmacists applied Cholestech technology in their pharmacy clinical care areas, treatment of patients to NCEP goal tripled when compared to 'physician only' practices."

Dr. Kraus went on to say, "The inclusion of pharmacists armed with point-of-care lipid testing improved patient access to the type of information that more than doubled their compliance with therapy. Also, the availability of the pharmacist to give feedback to patients about their progress, more than doubled the patient's persistence with therapy over a period of two years. Overall, Cholestech technology made it easier for large numbers of patients to reach their target lipid levels and maintain that success, and that is good for the patients."

Participating pharmacist, Marialice Bennett of Ohio State University Pharmacy Practice Clinic stated, "The results of Project ImPACT:Hyperlipidemia show that continued, regular monitoring of these patients helped reinforce and modify behavior to achieve optimal results. This close interaction empowered the patients to take charge of their health and stay on their course of treatment. The Cholestech L.D.X(R) System enabled us to provide our patients with reliable test results in only 5 minutes, during the patient's 'most teachable moment.' We find the L.D.X(R) System provides easy, patient friendly access to a complete breakdown of lipid levels, which is in compliance with NCEP guidelines.

"The results from Project ImPACT:Hyperlipidemia reinforce Cholestech's vision of convenient consumer testing, internet-based tools, and ongoing management of chronic disease in the pharmacy and other health care delivery points," said Warren E. Pinckert II, president and chief executive officer of Cholestech Corporation. "We're pleased that the ease-of-use and accuracy of the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System enabled the project's outstanding success in achieving adherence to therapy and improved patient outcomes. We expect our summer launch of WellCheck.com to reinforce these results as it offers interactive cholesterol management tools directly to the consumer."

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. 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 measure 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 via the Internet.

About Diagnostic Products

The 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 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; the ability of patients to achieve optimal results due to use of the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System, the ability of pharmacists to act as disease state managers, whether or not all patients may achieve similar results when placed in similar programs, and future persistence, compliance, and goal achievement rates for patients in a lipid management program. 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; unanticipated expenditures; changing relationships with customers, suppliers, and strategic partners; potential contractual, intellectual property, or employment issues; 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; the quality of our products; general economic conditions; specific conditions in the markets we address; and other factors.

Our recent Annual Report of 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 effect 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 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