Genetic analysis could not identify a clear hereditary cause for his deafness. Several proposed explanations for his gastrointestinal problems—including celiac disease, lactose intolerance, and irritable bowel syndrome—were found to be genetically unlikely.
The Y-chromosome comparison with living relatives revealed a paternal-line discrepancy indicating that at least one extra-pair paternity event occurred somewhere in the documented Beethoven family line between 1572 and 1770.
**What it could not establish:**
The specific cause of his deafness remains unknown.
The specific generation in which the paternal-line discrepancy occurred cannot be identified from the available evidence.
The identity of the woman from whose hair the Hiller Lock was made is unknown.
The cause of his chronic gastrointestinal illness was not identified.
Whether the hepatitis B infection was chronic or a recent acute exposure could not be determined.
The causal weight of each contributing factor—genetics, alcohol, hepatitis B, lead exposure—in his death cannot be precisely assigned.
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## A Genome Does Not Answer Everything
At the center of the 2023 Beethoven study is a specific kind of humility—an acknowledgment that the most powerful tools available to science can illuminate the past without resolving all of its mysteries.
The researchers sequenced a genome from hair that was nearly two centuries old. They authenticated five locks independently. They found evidence of disease predisposition and infection. They identified a discrepancy in a family genealogy that stretched back to the sixteenth century. They excluded several proposed explanations for chronic illness. They showed that one of the most famous relics in Beethoven scholarship was not his at all.