Atherotech's VAP Expanded Cholesterol Test Featured in Lindora's New Metabolic Fitness Treatment Program

Simple Blood Test Detects Hidden Heart Disease Risk

Birmingham, AL, October 12, 2004 – Atherotech, Inc., a leading specialty reference laboratory, today announced that the company's next-generation VAP™ (Vertical Auto Profile) Cholesterol Test will be featured as part of Lindora's cutting-edge Metabolic Fitness Treatment Program™. 

Lindora offers medically based, clinically proven weight-loss nutritional programs.  The company's new Metabolic Fitness Treatment Program, pioneered by the Lindora medical team, uses a state-of-the-art diagnostic tool, the Metabolic Fitness Quotient™, to create a unique evaluation of a patient's risk for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other preventable diseases.  Available at all 34 Lindora medical clinics in Southern California, the VAP Cholesterol Test provides direct, detailed measurements of cholesterol subclasses that play important roles in the development of heart disease, allowing it to identify more than 90 percent of at-risk patients—twice the detection rate of routine cholesterol tests.

“Offering the VAP Cholesterol Test as part of our innovative Metabolic Fitness Treatment Program reinforces our commitment to helping our patients get healthier inside and out,” said Cynthia Stamper Graff, president and chief executive officer of Lindora.  “This new diagnostic tool will play a key role in our behavior modification techniques, which have been clinically proven to give our patients the results they are looking for.” 

Roseanne Varner, Atherotech's president and chief executive officer, said, “We are pleased that the VAP Cholesterol Test will be offered by a well-respected, medically based weight-loss organization such as Lindora.  Atherotech and Lindora share a commitment to cardiovascular disease prevention, and this partnership will ensure that patients have access to the comprehensive cholesterol information that will help them improve their overall health and reduce their risk of heart disease.” 

The affordable VAP Test complies with updated National Cholesterol Education Program guidelines, which underscore emerging risk factors and secondary targets of therapy for heart disease.  The guidelines highlight the growing importance of such items as direct-measured low-density lipoprotein (LDL), LDL pattern size, and lipoprotein(a), also known as the “widow-maker.”  The VAP Test includes these additional measurements, and results, along with risk assessments based on these values, are reported to the physician in an easy-to-follow patient profile.  The test is available nationwide through national and regional diagnostic laboratories and is reimbursed by most payors, including Medicare.  Samples are processed in Atherotech's state-of-the-art laboratory in Birmingham.

About Lindora  
Cited as an authority by “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America” and CNN, as well as a number of nationally respected newspapers and magazines, Lindora Medical Clinics is a multi-faceted, medically supervised program combining diet, moderate exercise and motivational tools to help patients become lean for life.  Stressing an “eat better, move more, stress less” philosophy, Lindora helps 4,000 patients each day at its Southern California clinics and thousands of others through its cyber-clinics, workplace program, books, products and telephone coaching for those opting to lose weight from the comfort of their homes.  Lindora is a member of the Partnership for Healthy Weight Management, a coalition composed of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health.  For more information, visit www.lindora.com .

About Atherotech, Inc.  
Atherotech, a pioneer in cardiodiagnostic technology, is dedicated to improving the early diagnosis and treatment of heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases that kill nearly 1 million Americans each year.  Atherotech's VAP Test, the new standard of care in cholesterol risk assessment, was named one of “five tests worth paying for” by The Wall Street Journal.  For more information, visit www.thevaptest.com .