A surgical therapy for Alzheimer's disease with lymphaticovenular anastomosis.

Background: Deep cervical lymphaticovenular anastomosis (dcLVA) surgery is able to control aging-associated Alzheimer's disease in patients. However, the efficacy rate remains unknown.

Objective: This study is designed to test the surgery efficacy in the treatment of mild-to-moderate AD patients.

Methods: This is a single-center retrospective study of dcLVA treatment of mild-to-moderate AD for 3 months. A total of 41 patients received the surgery, in which lymph vessels and lymph nodes in the district III of cervical area were identified using indocyanine fluorescence dye. The afferent lymphatics of the obstructed lymph nodes were connected to the jugular vein to fix the lymphatic blockage under a fluorescent microscope. The efficacy rate was examined at 3-month post-surgery by clinical scores and biomarkers.

Results: Lymph flow obstruction was observed on both sides of cervical area in the AD patients. The obstruction was successfully resolved through the surgery, and AD progression was attenuated or even reversed in the patients according to improvement in the scales of MMSE, ADL, NPI, CDR-SB, and CGI-EI. The average effectiveness rate was 50% by the CDR-SB score improvement. The efficacy was higher with shorter disease duration but not influenced by age and APOE4 genotype. Aβ_42/40 ratio and p-tau181 were improved in more than 67% patients. There were 2 cases of mild adverse reactions that were controlled immediately by regular treatments.

Conclusions: The data demonstrate that dcLVA surgery is an effective and safe therapy for AD in mild-to-moderate patients with 50% efficacy rate as measured by improvement of the CDR-SB score.