One Health and Oral Health: A Scoping Review to Inform Research and Present Challenges

"One health" is an integrated, unifying approach that recognizes the interconnectedness between the health of people, animals, and the environment. Oral diseases are the most common diseases to affect humankind, and it is increasingly acknowledged that key determinants of oral heath are social and environmental. However, there is a dearth of information on the relationship between oral health and one health.

A scoping review was conducted to examine how animal and environmental health affects human oral health and vice versa, to examine the interest in the field overtime, and to provide a synthesis of the literature concerning one health in the oral health context to date.

A broad standardized search strategy was employed across 5 electronic databases. Screening of publications with defined inclusion and exclusion criteria followed PRISMA-ScR (the Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines.

The initial search yielded 345 articles; 163 remained after removal of duplicates. Nineteen articles were identified as "potentially effective studies," and after consideration of the full text, 13 articles were identified as "effective studies" to inform this review. Most studies were published since 2020 (60.5%, 8/13), and there were reports from 5 of the 6 World Health Organization regions (except the Eastern Mediterranean region). Most studies were observation in nature and mostly of cross-sectional study design (84.7%, 11/13 studies). More than half of the studies (53.8%, 7/13) were concerned with how environmental factors such as chemical exposures affect human oral health. Studies involving animals (46.2%, 6/13) highlighted the risk of zoonotic infections from horses and livestock to humans.

There is a recent and growing interest in "one health" in the oral health context. Qualitative synthesis of data highlighted the interconnectedness between the health of animals and environment with human health with implications for consideration and action by dentistry.

The results of this scoping review address the importance of dentistry in the "one health" concept. This scoping review will allow other researchers to be aware of and fill literature gaps with respect to the impact of animal health and environment on oral health and contribute to future research.