Supplement Supporter Gets Tenacious About D

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Dr. Soram Khalsa wants vitamin D to get more respect.

The Beverly Hills internist this month published his first book, “The Vitamin D Revolution,” and in the next few weeks will launch online sales of a home-test kit for vitamin D deficiency and moderately priced vitamin D supplements through his new company, Complementrix LLC.

“I want this to be easy for people, and their physicians, to do, because in my more than 30 years of medicine I’ve yet to find a nutrient that matches the benefits of vitamin D,” said Khalsa, who is on the medical staff of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Khalsa has partnered with an Oregon laboratory and an Idaho supplement maker that he uses for his own patients to produce private label products for the general public. The tests, including processing at the Oregon lab, are expected to cost around $75, with the supplements likely to run $10 to $15 for a three-month supply.

Khalsa believes that vitamin D is a misunderstood nutrient: It’s not really a vitamin at all, but a hormone that the body can manufacture itself when it receives direct sunlight. A body of peer-reviewed studies that Khalsa discovered at a medical conference five years ago suggests that lack of vitamin D can make a person susceptible to osteoporosis and cancer, as well as heart disease and high blood pressure.

Historically, vitamin D deficiency was cited as a cause of rickets, a childhood bone-weakening disease. Khalsa recommends that most healthy people should be taking five times the dosage that was prescribed when the vitamin was seen as a rickets prevention treatment.

Shareholder Survey

Amgen Inc. is polling its shareholders online about what they think of the Thousand Oaks biotech’s executive compensation practices.

In its annual proxy statement, the company encouraged shareholders to complete a 10-question online survey. They are asked whether they believe Amgen’s compensation plan is performance-based, is clearly linked to the company’s business strategy and promotes long-term value creation for shareholders, among other issues.

The online survey is one of the first of its kind in corporate America, and it comes as recession-battered shareholders are increasingly demanding a greater say in how top executives are paid. Amgen Chief Executive Kevin Sharer made about $14.5 million in 2008. The company’s 2008 net income rose 6 percent to $4.55 per share; revenues increased 2 percent to $15 billion.

The company plans to present the results to the board’s compensation committee, then post a summary of the survey after the annual shareholder meeting May 6, said spokesman David Polk.

“We did something similar last year where we asked a couple of open-ended questions and predictably got very broad responses,” Polk said.

Obagi Scaling Back

Obagi Medical Products Inc. is dropping its pharmacy sales channel in order to focus on its core line of therapeutic skin care products that are sold in doctors’ offices.

The Long Beach company had been selling Soluclenz Rx Gel, a proprietary benzoyl peroxide-based product, through pharmacies since August. That product will now be incorporated into the company’s Clenziderm brand.

“Despite the compelling clinical evidence, distribution of a single prescription product through the pharmacy channel and the ongoing investment is simply becoming cost-prohibitive in this current economic climate,” Chief Executive Steve Carlson said in a statement. The company plans to take a $900,000 charge in 2009 first quarter relating to writing off inventory and prepaid deposits.

Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 232.

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