Reply to "The Effects of Newer Antidepressants on Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Levels"

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We appreciate Le Mellשdo and colleagues’ interest in our work. Their point is well taken: our 4-week study may not have detected changes in levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and other lipids that could have reached statistical significance only after 8 or more weeks of mirtazapine exposure. However, we deliberately chose to study healthy control subjects in order to avoid potential confounding effects of a psychiatric disease state per se in our investigation of the effects of mirtazapine. For practical and ethical considerations, we limited the exposure of these healthy subjects to 1 month.