Over the past two months, we've had (on average) 1 case of Wernicke encephalopathy per week, where we'd expect to see several weeks or occasionally months between cases. All men in their 50s and 60s, all clearly associated with alcohol abuse, almost all with excellent response to treatment—but all with more severe symptoms at presentation than we usually see. This is a smallish town with a young, healthy, educated and mostly middle-class population, so a streak like this is very unexpected; in the 9 years that I've worked here, I can't recall a single year in which we've seen so many people with this condition in such a short time—not even last spring. Gonna try to see if I can get some info at the regional & national levels, but it's gonna be difficult due to inconsistent coding.