DNA from a strand of Beethoven’s hair helps reveal cause of death, researchers say.
The composer had health problems for most of his life. On March 26, 1827, he died of what many historians suspect was liver failure while in his apartment in Vienna. Analysis of several strands of hair passed down through families and collected by collectors shows that Beethoven had several genetic risk factors for liver disease scientists report on March 22 in Current Biology .
That increased risk — combined with a potential liver infection and the composer’s alleged drinking habits — may have precipitated Beethoven’s premature death at age 56, says Tristan Begg, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge.
It is common knowledge that Beethoven’s legendary career was cut short by progressive hearing loss, which left the composer completely deaf until the age of 45. Beethoven also suffered from gastrointestinal problems and a deteriorating liver. This malfunctioning organ is believed to be responsible for the composer’s skin turning yellow in the summer of 1821.
The root cause of many of Beethoven’s health problems was a source of admiration for many. But finding out what ails a person who lived almost two centuries ago is not an easy task. Researchers had to rely on notes from two autopsies of the composer, made after his exhumation in 1863 and 1888, and other historical documents.
However, clues may be hiding in Beethoven’s DNA. Only a few historical figures, such as Richard III, have undergone DNA testing. But these genetic troves can provide information that “no anatomical study after two hundred years can provide,” says Carles Laluesa-Fox, a paleogeneticist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, who was not involved in the study.
In 2014, Begg and his colleagues set out to reconstruct Beethoven’s genetic instruction book, or genome. First, the team needed a piece by the composer himself. Fortunately, about 30 individual strands of hair attributed to Beethoven have survived in the possession of collectors and descendants of the people who first received the hair in the 19th century.
Begg worked with Beethoven enthusiasts to ask the owners of these locks to part with a few locks. The team was able to collect samples from eight locks said to have been broken between 1821 and 1827.
One lock did not yield enough DNA for analysis. Of the other two castles could not have come from the composer; The researchers discovered that one belonged to a woman with ancestry consistent with Ashkenazi Jews. But five of the locks, obtained from different sources, clearly belong to the same person of Central European origin, which Beethoven apparently had. Natural DNA degradation over time in these strands is also consistent with early 19th century hair.
These common features, as well as clear information about who these individual locks of hair have belonged to over the centuries, make Begg “extremely confident” that the locks belong to Beethoven.
Lalueza-Fox agrees. “I think they provide compelling evidence that the five samples belong to the composer,” he says.
The researchers used some of the best-preserved castles to reconstruct the composer’s genome. This analysis did not find any genetic markers for deafness or intestinal problems. But the team identified several risk factors for liver disease, including a gene variant PNPLA3 which could triple the composer’s risk of developing liver problems during his lifetime.
These risk factors alone should not have doomed Beethoven. But scientists also found traces of the hepatitis B virus, which damages the liver, in one of the threads reportedly collected shortly after Beethoven’s death. Researchers say the risk to the liver from hepatitis B infection may be further increased by regular alcohol consumption. Some contemporaries claimed that the composer drank heavily until the end of his life.
While we don’t know exactly what combination of factors killed Beethoven, “it’s a fascinating detective story,” says Ian Gilmore, a hepatologist at Liverpool University Hospital in England, who was not involved in the study.
A fascinating story with a new twist: The Y chromosome in five hair samples does not match the Y chromosome of five people who share a common ancestor with Beethoven in the 14th century. (The composer never had any known children.) This may be a sign that the hair is not real. Or, more likely, one of Beethoven’s direct paternal ancestors had a child out of wedlock, perhaps sometime between the 14th and 16th centuries, Begg says.
