Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a letter to his brothers in 1802. In it, he asked them to have him examined by his doctor after his death and to publish the result. But the doctor’s notes were never found. The list of Beethoven’s health problems is long. These were known to include his progressive hearing loss, which occurred at an age of about 25 to 29 In 1818, the composer was de facto deaf. In addition, the musician suffered from chronic gastrointestinal complaints and he fell ill with jaundice at least once. Cirrhosis of the liver had long been considered the most likely cause of his death at the age of 56 years in the year 1827.
In order to find out more about his diseases and the cause of death, an international research team has now used modern archaeogenetic methods and examined five strands of hair that are «almost certainly authentic», as the researchers write in the journal»».
The research team searched Beethoven’s genome for genetic markers associated with diseases.For Beethoven’s deafness or his gastrointestinal problems, they could not recognize this. However, they discovered a number of significant genetic risk factors for liver disease. They also found evidence of hepatitis B virus infection, which may have occurred several months before his fatal liver disease.
«Beethoven’s conversation notebooks, which he used in the last decade of his life, suggest that he consumed alcohol very regularly,» says the study’s lead author, Tristan Begg of the University of Cambridge. Most of his contemporaries claimed that his alcohol consumption was by Viennese standards in the early 19th century; S. S. «In our estimation, it was still amounts of alcohol that are now known to be harmful to the liver. If Beethoven’s alcohol consumption was high enough over a sufficiently long period of time, the interaction with his genetic risk factors is a possible explanation for his cirrhosis.» The research team also suspects that Beethoven’s hepatitis B infection may have been a contributory cause of the composer’s severe liver disease.
Beethoven’s hearing loss has been linked to several possible causes, including diseases that are genetic to varying degrees.»Although no clear genetic cause for Beethoven’s hearing loss could be identified, one cannot completely rule it out. The reference data necessary for the interpretation of individual genomes are constantly improving. It is therefore possible that Beethoven’s genome will provide clues to the origin of his hearing loss in the future,» says Axel Schmidt from the Institute of Human Genetics at the University Hospital. Bonn.
A genetic explanation for Beethoven’s gastrointestinal complaints could not be found either, but on the basis of the genomic data, the researchers conclude that gluten and lactose intolerance can most likely be ruled out as causes. The same applies to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), against which Beethoven even found a certain degree of genetic protection.
«In view of the known medical history, it is very likely that genetic predisposition, hepatitis B infection and alcohol consumption led to Beethoven’s death.In the future, it will be necessary to investigate the exact extent to which each individual factor was involved,» explains Tristan . Begg.
In total, the team conducted authentication tests on eight hair samples taken from public and private collections in the UK, continental Europe and the US. The researchers discovered that at least two of the locks of hair did not come from Beethoven, including a famous curl that the then 15-year-old musician Ferdinand Hiller is said to have cut off from the head of the recently deceased composer. Earlier analyses of the Hiller-Locke supported the assumption that may have contributed to his health ailments, including his hearing loss. But the said Locke comes from a woman, as the analyses show. Beethoven’s entire genome was sequenced from a sample of the «stump curl» from a collection of Kevin Brown, a member of the American Beethoven Society. It was the best preserved sample.
The team also analysed the genetic material of Beethoven’s living relatives in Belgium, but could not find a match with the composer’s genetic material in any of them.According to genealogical studies, some of them have a common paternal ancestor with Beethoven from the late 1500s and early 1600s&- years, but their Y-linked genome did not match the Y chromosome found in Beethoven’s locks of hair. The research team concluded that this was likely the result of at least one extramarital event, a child from an extramarital relationship, in Beethoven’s direct paternal line. «By combining DNA data and archival documents, we were able to identify a discrepancy between Ludwig van Beethoven’s legal and biological genealogy,» says genealogist Maarten Larmuseau from KU Leuven.
The study suggests that this event took place in the direct paternal line between the conception of Hendrik van Beethoven in Kampenhout, Belgium, around 1572, and the conception of Ludwig van Beethoven seven generations later, in 1770, in Bonn. Although doubts had previously been expressed about the paternity of Beethoven’s father because there was no baptismal entry, the researchers could not determine in which generation this event took place.But perhaps Ludwig van Beethoven is not a van Beethoven at all.
Source — https://www.spektrum.de/news/dna-analyse-beethovens-haarlocke-lueftet-geheimnisse/2122719