Are caries linked to political regime?

Estrada-Montoya and co-author Jesús Erazo Estrada, also from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, sought to determine whether prolonged exposure to a given political regime affected the decay-missing-filled (DMF) Index in various countries according to the political typologies of Social Democratic, Conservative, Liberal and Dictatorial regimes.

This ecological epidemiological was study based on secondary sources from the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, the World Bank and various websites from countries that met the inclusion criteria. A country's assignment to a political typology was determined by the political orientation of its ruling party.

The results from the 62 countries showed that countries categorized as Social Democratic and Liberal had better results in decreasing the DMTF Index (Social Democratic with a decrease of -65.72% and Liberal with a decrease of -53.97%) than did Conservative (with a decrease of -37.62%) and especially Dictatorial regimes (with an increase of +14.53%).

The authors note that the typology they used did not adapt well for Third World politics. They suggest the creation of new interdisciplinary typologies better suited to Third World political realities in order to further characterize and study the relationship between political regimes and oral healthcare indicators.