This Section of Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences appears in each issue of the Journal to stress the role of the epidemiological approach to promote advances in the field of clinical psychopharmacology, with a particular attention to controversial findings. The ultimate aims are to help develop a more critical attitude towards the results of research studies published in the international literature, to promote original research projects with higher methodological standards, and to implement the most relevant results of research in every-day clinical practice. These contributions are written in house by the journal's editorial team or commissioned by the Section Editor (no more than 1000 words, short unstructured abstract, 4 key-words, one Table or Patients experiencing psychoses and in need of antipsychotic agents may be exposed to a higher risk of myocardial infarction (MI) than the general population. As there have been no randomised studies investigating this association, a recent systematic review and meta-analysis included all observational studies that compared the incidence of MI among patients receiving antipsychotics v. no treatment. It found nine studies and calculated that the odds (risk) for developing MI were 1.88-fold higher in antipsychotic users compared with individuals who had not taken antipsychotic drugs. In this commentary, the results of this systematic review are discussed in view of their clinical implications for everyday clinical practice. Key words: Antipsychotics, myocardial infarction, observational studies, psychosis, systematic reviews.While it is widely recognised that systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) represent the most reliable and appropriate reference standard to summarise the efficacy of interventions, for safety outcomes individual RCTs and systematic reviews may not provide satisfactory information. This is especially the case when safety outcomes are rare, as RCTs usually enrol too few participants to establish associations, when adverse effects are unexpected, as RCTs may systematically collect information only on pre-defined adverse outcomes, and when adverse effects do not occur immediately after the intervention is provided, as RTCs are usually short in duration.For these reasons, observational studies and systematic reviews of these studies are usually considered at the pinnacle of the evidence hierarchy for safety outcomes, to be used to inform future research, clinical practice and policy decisions (Vandenbroucke, 2008). A practical example of synthesis of observational studies for investigating the occurrence of a safety outcome has recently been provided by Yu et al. (2016), who carried out a systematic review investigating whether exposure to antipsychotic drugs (AP) increases the risk of myocardial infarction (MI). This association has been investigated by several epidemiological studies, but findings are controversial and therefore difficult to translate into practical recommendations. While an association between cardiovascular ev...