Uncovering the Secrets of Beethoven’s Illness: How DNA from His Hair Offers Clues

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Researchers looked at strands of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair to find out more about the health issues and hearing loss that he experienced. They couldn’t answer why he was deaf or what caused his stomach problems, but they did figure out that he had a risk for liver disease and a liver-damaging sickness in the last months of his life.

A study published Wednesday said that Beethoven’s chronic drinking and other health factors likely contributed to the liver failure which killed him 196 years ago on March 26, 1827. This Sunday marks the birthday of his death in Vienna at age 56. Before he died, Beethoven asked doctors to look into his health problems.

Axel Schmidt, a geneticist from University Hospital Bonn in Germany said it has always been mysterious why Beethoven’s illnesses often stopped his creative works. Since he passed away, scientists have tried to investigate what was behind all of his sicknesses.

Scientists have been able to discover genetic information from five pieces of Beethoven’s hair that were snipped and kept as souvenirs. The five locks are very likely real and all came from one European man, the researchers said.

The researchers also looked at three other historical locks but couldn’t be sure if any of them belonged to Beethoven. In the past, a test on one of those locks suggested that Beethoven had lead poisoning, but the team later found out it was from a woman instead.

To get more information about Beethoven, scientists carefully cleaned his hair strand by strand and dissolved the pieces into a solution. Then, they fished out chunks of DNA from the solution for further testing. The study author is Tristan James Alexander Begg, who is a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge.

Scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology faced a difficult task when researching Beethoven’s genes. The DNA in his hair was chopped up so that it was very hard to study, until they used almost 10 feet of it to put together the genome. With this information, they were able to check if Beethoven had any genetic diseases.

Even though the researchers didn’t find any genetic clues as to why Beethoven had tummy troubles, they knew that celiac disease and lactose intolerance weren’t the causes. As we learn more about how genes affect our health, maybe in the future our genomes can show us solutions to these mysteries.

Researchers found something strange when looking at the DNA of living relatives related to Beethoven. The chromosomes that are passed down on the father’s side through generations did not match with Beethoven’s-even though they all matched each other.

This means that a baby was likely born from a relationship outside of marriage somewhere in Beethoven’s family, according to Begg. In other words, this child did not come from a mom and dad who were married to each other.

Dr. Avraham Z. Cooper from Ohio State University said that we don’t know yet what caused Beethoven’s hearing loss and it could be hard to figure out because genetics only tells us half of the story when it comes to our health. He added that this is part of what makes Beethoven such an interesting person – not knowing the exact cause of his hearing loss is completely okay!

Daniel Niemann, a reporter from Bonn, Germany, has given information to the Big Big News Health and Science Department. This information is made possible thanks to help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. Ultimately though, the AP (Associated Press) is in control of all content found in this report.