One explanation is that the percept

One explanation is that the perception of psychological symptoms of depression is superimposed with somatic complaints, perhaps related to other comorbidities. An-other reason is the difference in item content: for ex-ample, the HAM-D21 and BDI overlap on only half of the items and therefore evaluate different aspects of the disease. Unlike the HAM-D21, the BDI lacks anxiety and motor symptoms and includes a high per-centage of cognitive symptoms, which take longer to improve. However, these data differ from the informa-tion in a previous study, in which the scores of the HAM-D21 and BDI have improved significantly in parallel for the duration of the protocol (Wohlreich et al., 2004). The anxiety symptomatology at T0 sig-nificantly correlated with cognitive performance prob-ably because of the sharing anxiety can hinder the achievement of the attention level required to perform the tasks. Plasma level values are in line with those re-ported in literature (Skinner et al., 2004). Regarding DLX plasma levels, we did not find a significant corre-lation neither with DLX dose nor with age; also, the dose administered and the values of creatinine clear-ance (always >30 mL/min) did not affect the bioavail-ability of the drug. We observed a significant negative correlation between DLX plasma level and the percent improvement of BDI and HAM-A scales: with the in-crease in plasma concentration, in fact, the anxiety and the patients’ perception of the disease severity seem to worse. In any case, the increase in prescribed dosages does not reflect a significant increase in the drug plasma concentration and plasma concentrations are not associated with a clinical improvement but rather a worse perception of ‘illness severity’. As regards tolerability, 12 patients (34.28%) dropped out