Neuroinflammation-Associated Synaptic Dysfunction in Neurodegenerative Diseases: A Dual-Database Parallel Bibliometric Analysis

Neuroinflammation-associated synaptic dysfunction is increasingly recognized as a convergent pathological process across neurodegenerative diseases; however, the development, knowledge structure, and emerging directions of this interdisciplinary field remain incompletely characterized. Here, we present a structured bibliometric workflow for retrieving, curating, and analyzing bibliographic records from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus using a dual-database parallel design. Publications from 2000-2025 were independently retrieved, filtered, and processed, yielding 1,841 records from Web of Science and 2,429 records from Scopus. Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, CiteSpace, BiblioVista, and Scimago Graphica were used to characterize publication trends, disciplinary distributions, international collaboration, author and institutional networks, core journals and references, keyword co-occurrence, citation bursts, and thematic evolution. Both databases showed sustained growth in research output, with higher publication activity observed after 2015. The United States and China were among the leading contributors and highly connected participants in international collaboration networks. The intellectual and conceptual structures of the field were frequently characterized by recurring themes involving neuroinflammation, microglia, synaptic dysfunction, complement-mediated synaptic pruning, oxidative stress, synaptic plasticity, and neurodegenerative disease pathology. Temporal analyses showed evolving patterns in research themes, with increasing representation of studies related to neuroimmune synapse interactions and synaptic vulnerability. By retaining the two databases as independent analytical corpora rather than directly merging their records, this workflow enables descriptive comparison of shared and database-specific bibliometric patterns. The workflow provides a structured framework for mapping neuroinflammation-synapse research and may be adapted to other interdisciplinary biomedical fields.