Tethys Bioscience, Inc. and ACAP Health Consulting Partner to Help Employers Prevent Diabetes

EMERYVILLE, Calif. and DALLAS, Dec. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Tethys Bioscience has entered into an agreement with ACAP Health Consulting, an industry leader in helping employers measurably flatten the trajectory of their healthcare trends through reducing the production and destruction of disease in their employee populations. The agreement allows ACAP Health to offer the PreDx® Diabetes Risk Score (DRS) to employers as a component of its disease intervention programs. The PreDx DRS is a multi-biomarker blood test that identifies the individuals at highest risk for developing type 2 diabetes within 5 years. In addition to enabling the more cost-efficient allocation of healthcare resources toward those at highest risk of progressing to diabetes, PreDx DRS has been shown to be an effective tool for monitoring the impact of lifestyle interventions in reducing disease risk.

"Having used the PreDx DRS extensively in clinical practice, I know it's a game-changer in diabetes prevention," said Scott Conard, MD, Chief Medical Officer at ACAP Health. "That makes it a perfect fit for ACAP Health, which is built on the belief that the only sustainable way to reduce healthcare costs is to go after the real enemy, which is disease."

Randy Strahan, CEO/President of Tethys Bioscience, concurs. "Like ACAP Health, we recognize that the solution to escalating and unsustainable healthcare costs is to prevent diseases like type 2 diabetes in the first place. The PreDx DRS, as well as other tools and programs offered by ACAP Health, go a long way toward making that goal a reality."

About Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes mellitus, which accounts for 95% of diabetes cases, is a preventable chronic disease that currently affects nearly 26 million American adults, with another 79 million considered at risk based on impaired glucose function. Medical expenditures for people with type 2 diabetes are more than two times higher than for like-aged people without the disease, primarily because of a wide range of diabetes-related complications that include a 2-4-fold increase in heart attack and stroke, progressive kidney disease, lower-limb amputations and blindness. As of 2007, diabetes-related health care expenditures exceeded $218 billion, with approximately one-third of that total attributable to indirect costs (lost productivity due to diminished on-job performance, absenteeism, disability and premature death).

About ACAP Health Consulting

Dallas-based ACAP Health offers measurable solutions that go beyond the traditional cost-reimbursement model to focus on disease prevention. ACAP Health programs connect at-risk individuals with medical resources and services that support improved health and wellness, so that they can reverse risk and avoid disease in the first place. ACAP Health works with hundreds of corporate employers, physicians and hospitals across the country.

About the PreDx® Diabetes Risk Score

The PreDx® Diabetes Risk Score is a fasting glucose test that measures multiple biomarkers linked to the pathways for diabetes progression, generating a Diabetes Risk Score between 1 and 10 that corresponds to an individual's risk of developing type 2 diabetes within 5 years. Validated by the Tethys Clinical Laboratory (TCL) in a number of large populations, the PreDx DRS has been shown to be more accurate than traditional risk assessment methods in predicting diabetes outcomes, and to be a reliable method for monitoring the impact of lifestyle interventions on a patient's risk status. The PreDx DRS is currently performed exclusively by the CLIA-certified Tethys Clinical Laboratory located in Emeryville, CA.

About Tethys Bioscience

Tethys Bioscience is a cardiometabolic diagnostics company that creates and commercializes biomarker-based blood tests that predict imminent disease risk and enable targeted intervention to forestall the onset of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes. Tethys initiated sales of its first product the PreDx® Diabetes Risk Score in 2009, and has processed 55,000 to date. Additional products are in development to determine risk for first-time heart attack, osteoporotic fracture and other cardiometabolic diseases. For more information about Tethys and PreDx DRS, please visit www.tethysbio.com.

SOURCE Tethys Bioscience

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