Controversial Alzheimer’s surgery is said to reverse symptoms. Here’s what scientists say

image via New Scientist

August 26, 2026, 1:00 PM

• •The article examines deep cervical lymphatic-venous anastomosis, a surgery that connects neck lymphatic vessels to nearby veins to try to improve brain waste drainage in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
• •The procedure spread rapidly in China after dramatic patient videos circulated, but regulators later limited it to ethics-approved clinical research because evidence for safety and efficacy was still weak.
• •Published reports from China suggest modest average improvements in cognitive scores and amyloid-β and tau biomarkers, while some individual cases showed far more dramatic changes.
• •Researchers remain divided because most evidence comes from small or non-randomized studies, the mechanism is unclear, and benefits may be temporary or partly influenced by placebo effects and expectations.
• •Trials are now under way in China, the United States, Europe, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, including some randomized studies and at least one sham-surgery-controlled study.
• •The surgeon who pioneered the method, Qingping Xie, has been detained in China for undisclosed reasons, adding uncertainty around the technique’s development.

The article reports on deep cervical lymphatic-venous anastomosis, an experimental surgery intended to improve waste drainage from the brain by linking neck lymphatic vessels to nearby veins. Dramatic patient videos helped the procedure spread rapidly in China, but the supporting evidence so far comes mostly from small, weakly controlled studies and anecdotal reports. Researchers interviewed by Nature say the idea is biologically plausible, yet they question how quickly patients appear to improve, whether benefits endure and how much placebo effects or other conditions could explain the results. Regulators in China have restricted the operation to research settings, and larger controlled trials are now under way in multiple countries to test whether the surgery truly helps Alzheimer’s patients.

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