Representing Dental Caries and Dysbiosis within the Oral Microbiome in the Oral Health and Disease Ontology

Background. Dental caries is an oral health condition in which cariogenic bacteria demineralize and decay teeth. It arises due to interaction between the host, environment, and oral microbiome. Current terminologies and ontologies, however, do not accurately represent the important role that the microbiome has in the formation of carious lesions. Rather, they focus on the anatomical features of carious lesions and often obfuscate the distinctions between dental caries as a disease affecting a tooth, as lesions that are produced because of the disease, and as lesions produced as a result of dysbiosis in the oral microbiome. To capture the current state of evidence and provide flexibility for evolving literature on host-environment-microbiome interactions, there is a need to revise and expand the ontological framework for dental caries. Results. Several established terminologies and ontologies were reviewed for terms used to represent dental caries and the oral microbiome. We found that they either did not represent or misrepresented the current scientific understanding of caries and its relation to the microbial dysbiosis. As a result of these deficiencies, we added terms and relations to the Oral Health and Disease Ontology (OHD) that more accurately represent how oral microbial dysbiosis influences the development of dental caries. Conclusions. The Oral Health and Disease Ontology is an advance over existing ontologies for representing the impact of oral microbial dysbiosis on dental caries. It provides a semantic framework that better serves the needs of cariology researchers and can more easily incorporate new oral microbiome findings.