Oral Health of Astronauts in Short- and Long-Term Missions in Space
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Space exploration presents unique challenges to human health due to space radiation, reduced gravity, and prolonged isolation. Astronauts should be prepared to manage medical and dental emergencies. This scoping review maps the evidence on oral health alterations and dental emergencies faced by astronauts during short- and long-term space missions. METHODS: A "Topical Team" assembled by the European Space Agency performed the review described herein. An electronic search was conducted on scientific databases, reference lists of relevant papers, specific textbooks, and space agencies' databases. Inclusion criteria encompassed studies related to dental medicine in microgravity or outer orbital space conditions. Results are presented through narrative format. RESULTS: Out of 23,686 studies identified, 467 were considered eligible and 80 (54 reviews and 26 human-based studies) were included. The latter were classified into three broad topics: microbiology, space physiology and medicine, and space dentistry. Among the studies involving human subjects, 17 involved individuals who had spent time in space. There are only a few studies about oral health modifications and issues during spaceflight and those have limited evidence. Dental emergencies in space are relatively rare events that tend to increase with mission duration. DISCUSSION: The impact of microgravity on oral health requires further investigation. Preflight and in-flight measures should focus on prevention and treatment protocols for various dental issues to ensure crew safety and mission success. Understanding and addressing factors affecting oral health in microgravity will enhance the well-being of astronauts and the success of human exploration missions in space. Del Fabbro M, Khijmatgar S, Vandenberghe B, Kijak E, Kulesa-Mrowiecka M, Singhal I, Lorusso F, Xavier BB, Sampson V, Marfia G, Neefs D, Tartaglia GM. Oral health of astronauts in short- and long-term missions in space. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2025; 96(2):168-179.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".