Representative oral microbiome data for the US population: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The human oral microbiome plays many important roles in human health.1 However, most oral microbiome studies have been conducted among convenience samples of volunteers and thus might not fully reflect the diversity of oral microbial communities in the human population.2 To understand the oral microbiome, large, diverse, population-representative studies are needed that collect demographic, behavioural, environmental, and other exposure data and that follow up individuals over time for health outcomes.