These factors, along with his chronic drinking, were probably enough to cause the liver failure that is widely believed to have killed him, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Current Biology.

This Sunday marks the 196th anniversary of Beethoven’s death in Vienna on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56. The composer himself wrote that he wanted doctors to study his health problems after he died.

“With Beethoven in particular, it is the case that illnesses sometimes very much limited his creative work,” said study author Axel Schmidt, a geneticist at University Hospital Bonn in Germany. “And for physicians, it has always been a mystery what was really behind it.”

Since his death, scientists have long tried to piece together Beethoven’s medical history.

Now, with advances in DNA technology, researchers have been able to pull genetic clues from locks of Beethoven’s hair that had been snipped off and preserved as keepsakes.

They focused on five locks that are “almost certainly authentic,” coming from the same European male, according to the study.

After cleaning Beethoven’s hair one strand at a time, scientists dissolved the pieces into a solution and fished out chunks of DNA, said study author Tristan James Alexander Begg, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge.

While researchers didn’t find any clear genetic signs of what caused Beethoven’s gastrointestinal issues, they found coeliac disease and lactose intolerance were unlikely causes

In the future, the genome may offer more clues as we learn more about how genes influence health, Begg said.

What caused his hearing loss is still unanswered, said Ohio State University’s Dr Avraham Z Cooper

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