Article Highlights the Value of PreDx® Testing of Prediabetic Patients in the Primary Care Setting

EMERYVILLE, Calif., June 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- An article published in Clinical Diabetes describes the clinical value of PreDx testing for more effective management of prediabetes patients in the primary care practice setting.  The PreDx test is a predictive multi-biomarker fasting blood test developed by Tethys Bioscience, Inc., that stratifies adult patients with prediabetes into low, moderate or high risk categories for developing type 2 diabetes within 5 years. In addition to enabling the more cost‐efficient allocation of healthcare resources toward those prediabetes patients at highest risk of progression, PreDx has also been shown to be an effective tool for monitoring the impact of lifestyle interventions in reducing the likelihood of developing the disease.

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Authored by primary care practitioners Paul Rich, MD and Charles Shaefer, MD, endocrinologist Steven Edelman, MD, and Chris G. Parkin, MS, the article discusses how PreDx testing helps health care providers overcome two important obstacles that hinder more effective diabetes prevention efforts in the primary care setting – the inability of current assessment tools to differentiate prediabetes patients based on risk of progression, and the constraints on physician time and resources. A review of published literature regarding the clinical validity of PreDx for the risk-based stratification of prediabetes patients and the monitoring of their response to interventions is accompanied by case studies that illustrate the authors' experiences with the test in their practices, and concludes with a four-step process to help clinicians effectively integrate the PreDx test into their prediabetes management protocols.

The authors summarized their experiences with PreDx testing as follows:

Paul Rich, MD: "Our experience with PreDx testing has illustrated its value as a practical means to achieve greater success in diabetes prevention at the primary care level. Unlike other lab tests that give us more numbers to consider, PreDx interprets those results for us, generating a predictive score that identifies our most vulnerable prediabetes patients, and helps guide our management strategies for those patients. That saves us time, optimizes how we use our resources, and gives our patients a better chance of avoiding a very bad disease. No other test does that."

Charles Shaefer, MD: "The insights we get with PreDx, in terms of who to treat more intensively and how well they're responding to those interventions, have enabled us to make more-informed treatment decisions that produce better outcomes, as demonstrated by the results achieved in our case studies."

Steven Edelman, MD: "An added advantage of PreDx is the motivational impact their score has on patients who have resisted dealing with their diabetes risk despite previous warnings. Somehow, a personalized numerical score, that presents their risk on a scale of 1 to 10, gets through to them, and prompts them to take action to lower their risk by making healthier lifestyle choices."

Juan Frias, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Tethys Bioscience and a practicing endocrinologist, commented on how the review article could help enhance the use of the PreDx test, especially given the recent launch of a fingerstick option for blood collection. "PreDx is a valuable clinical tool that, until recently, has only been accessible to practices with in-practice phlebotomy capabilities. The flexibility to perform the test with either venous or capillary blood means that many more practices will be able to offer PreDx to their prediabetes patients, and benefit from the unique clinical utilities it offers."

About the PreDx® Test
PreDx® is a fasting blood test that predicts the 5-year likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes in adults with prediabetes. The test measures three biomarkers related to glucose metabolism – glucose, hemoglobin A1C, and insulin – as well as four additional markers of metabolic functions implicated in the development of type 2 diabetes – adiponectin (adipose function), plus C-Reactive Protein, ferritin and Interleukin 2-Reactive alpha (inflammation).  The proprietary PreDx algorithm combines biomarker results with patient age and gender to generate a "personalized" numerical score that corresponds to an individual's 5-year risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The score is presented on a scale of 1 to 10, with a higher score indicating a higher 5-year risk of progression. Validated by the Tethys Clinical Laboratory (TCL) in a number of large populations, PreDx has been shown to be more accurate than fasting plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1C screening tests for predicting diabetes outcomes, and to be a reliable method for monitoring the impact of lifestyle interventions on a patient's risk status. PreDx test kits are provided by the CLIA‐certified Tethys Clinical Laboratory located in Emeryville, CA. For more information about the PreDx test, and to obtain test supplies, please visit www.predxdiabetes.com.

About Tethys Bioscience, Inc.
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® Test – in 2009, and has processed 180,000 tests 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, please visit www.tethysbio.com.

SOURCE Tethys Bioscience, Inc.