What illness did Beethoven have?: DNA from his hair offers new clues almost 200 years later

There are new clues about Ludwig van Beethoven’s illness. research team extracted DNA five strands of hair from one of the greatest composers in history. They were unable to determine the cause of his deafness, but found several indications of what ultimately caused his death.

they found genetic predisposition to liver disease, in addition to hepatitis B infection that he had damaged his liver in the last months of his life. An autopsy after his death, which took place in 1827 in Vienna, already showed that Beethoven cirrhosis of the liver, caused by his problematic alcohol use. All these factors together explain why he died at the age of 56.

New data on Beethoven’s disease were published today in the journal Current biology. Already next Sunday, March 26 196 years have passed since the death of the artist. “Diseases sometimes severely limited their creativity… It has always been a mystery to doctors what is really behind it,” Axel Schmidt, a geneticist at Bonn University Hospital in Germany and one of the authors of the study, told Associated. Press agency Pennsylvania.

How was the study of Beethoven’s disease done?

Alcohol has so far been the only known cause Beethoven’s liver disease. The researchers analyzed eight strands of hair are preserved in public and private collections in the US and Europe. They determined that five of them belonged to the same person. They determined that it was “almost certainly” the author of many legendary works, including Symphonies No. 5, No. 6, and No. 9, the Moonlight Sonata, and Für Elise.

The castle in its best condition was called Stumpf Castle, which was the name of the man who once held it. This is what he used to sequence his genome.

“DNA has really degraded,” he said. Reuters Johannes Krause, director of the Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Max Planck in Germany, as well as a participant in the study of Beethoven’s disease. “It was really difficult to get enough DNA from such a sample to assemble the genome. We had to extract DNA from over 2 meters of hair. one of the strands.

The study found neither the cause of the deafness nor the cause of the gastrointestinal ailment that Beethoven also suffered from. But they researched the artist’s pedigree and found a surprise. Genetic data and five living relatives showed that he existed. child conceived from an extramarital affair his father’s family.