Ludwig van Beethoven died 196 years ago but there has always been speculation about what he actually died of. Now, having sequenced genes from a sample of the great composer’s hair, it is thought he may have died of liver disease, including damage by alcohol. It is still only speculation about what caused his famous loss of hearing.
At the end of March, Current Biology magazine reported research which has been done into the cause of Ludwig van Beethoven’s death. Earlier, in autumn 1802, the composer had written to his brothers asking them to contact his doctor after his death, in the hope of finding out what caused his increasing deafness.
Due to advances in DNA sequencing over the past 20 years, Tristan Begg, University of Cambridge (UK), and his ancient-genome research colleagues, managed to extract DNA from locks of hair which are reputed to those of Beethoven, although attempts had previously failed.
Analysis did not find a specific cause for his deafness but did find that the composer had most likely died from liver failure caused by multiple factors including excessive alcohol consumption.
Although the reason for Beethoven’s hearing loss remains mysterious, the sequencing of the DNA produced a sample of two-thirds of the total genome, and these were analysed for genes known to cause possible diseases.
This work is painstaking and difficult, as DNA degrades over time, although there have been other cases using these methods e.g. the identification of two daughters of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
The Beethoven DNA analysis identified the fact that Beethoven had two copies of a variant of the gene PNPLA3 – linked to a tendency for cirrhosis of the liver, as well as single copies of two different variants of the HFE gene that causes hereditary haemochromatosis, which also damages the liver. The contributary factor of alcohol consumption, of course, comes not from the genes but from history.
A separate but connected factor was that virus fragments of hepatitis B, also causing liver damage, were also extracted from the DNA. This is thought to have been a chronic, dormant infection, reactivated in the months before he died in March 1827.
