Thoma JS, Efthimiou O, Bighelli I, et al. – In this investigation, researchers tested their hypothesis that antipsychotic drugs could contribute to increased physical morbidity and mortality observed in patients with severe mental health disorders via causing acutely occurring, serious side-effects. Serious adverse events defined by the International Conference on Harmonisation-Good Clinical Practice and occurring in placebo-controlled trials of antipsychotics were meta-analyzed for this work. Searching MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL, BIOSIS, PsycINFO, PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, 597 randomized controlled trials, comprising 108,664 participants, were identified for inclusion. The main dataset for meta-analysis was obtained from 314 trials (67,642 participants) with details on individual serious adverse events available. Outcomes suggested that patients on antipsychotics experience short-term somatic serious adverse events on top of somatic serious adverse events, independent of treatment. Outcomes in older patients are the main driver of this effect. Hence, the researchers recommended clinicians to be aware of the potentially toxic effects of antipsychotics, especially when managing patients sharing risk factors with the older population.