And Demyelinating Diseases Sponsors do not influence content. They described 3 male alcoholics who died following seizures and coma. The middle two-thirds of the corpus callosa showed severe necrosis. Through the years, additional cases have accumulated. About 150 have been reported in the medical literature.
Most patients are male alcoholics.
Italian ethnicity, which was present in the earliest described cases, is now known not to be a factor. In rare cases the disease has been seen in non-alcoholics. Other cases occur in association with Wernicke's encephalopathy. The patient exhibited left hemispatial neglect in addition to the expected left handed apraxia and agraphia. Though journal articles may not be a reliable index of prevalence, my literature search of the PubMed database turned up 94 references.