It would seem that the British public, long the butt of dentistry jokes told by Americans, has now been issued bragging rights by the scientific community.

According to an analysis of dental surveys in England and the United States, The British Medical Journal determined that American adults have more missing teeth than their English counterparts, 7.31 compared with 6.97.

The study concludes that the oral health of United States citizens is not better than the English.

Stories about the study were being widely shared online Thursday morning, especially in Britain, but it should be noted that the findings have significant limitations.

For example, it mainly focused on one clinical measure of dental health: the number of missing teeth, which researchers say could be explained, in part, by different approaches to wisdom teeth extraction. The study did not take orthodontics or aesthetic dentistry into account, and researchers pointed out that self-reported patient information is often subjective.