Trained immunity in inflammatory bone disease: a bibliometric and literature-level text-mining analysis

Trained immunity provides a framework for understanding persistent innate immune reprogramming in chronic inflammatory and immune-mediated disorders. Its relationship with osteoimmunology and inflammatory bone disease, however, remains insufficiently characterized.

We performed a bibliometric and literature-level text-mining analysis using WoSCC as the primary source for formal bibliometric analyses. A two-corpus design was used, with a core corpus for disease-focused bibliometric analysis and an extended corpus for semantic screening and sensitivity analyses. Scopus and PubMed were queried independently for cross-database comparison. Topic modeling, TF-IDF-based semantic screening, disease-context analysis, and bridge-network mapping were used to summarize literature-level patterns.

The core corpus included 83 records, and the extended corpus included 301 records. Within the full-year 2013-2025 comparison window, publication output increased over time and reached its highest level in 2025. Cross-database comparison showed broadly concordant publication trends and substantial DOI-level overlap across WoSCC, Scopus, and PubMed. Periodontitis was the most prominent disease context, whereas osteoarthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, osteoporosis, and inflammatory arthritis also appeared in the disease-context mapping. Across bibliometric, semantic, and mapping analyses, recurrent literature-level patterns involved myeloid-cell reprogramming, epigenetic and metabolic remodeling, macrophage- and monocyte-associated terms, myelopoiesis, innate immune signaling, and osteoclast-related pathways.

Research on trained immunity in inflammatory bone disease remains relatively small but is expanding. Current literature most consistently connects trained-immunity-related concepts with myeloid reprogramming, immunometabolic and epigenetic processes, periodontitis, and inflammatory bone remodeling. These findings provide a structured literature-level overview of an emerging field and may help guide future mechanistic, experimental, and translational studies.