Mozart may have died of strep throat complications

So ill he could not move, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart supposedly sang parts of his final masterpiece, "Requiem," from his deathbed. Two centuries later, the exact cause of the Austrian composer's premature death, in December 1791 at age 35, is still a mystery.

Theories abound. It's known that his entire body was so swollen he couldn't turn over in bed; some say jealous rivals poisoned him, while others suggest scarlet fever, tuberculosis, or lethal trichinosis from undercooked pork.


Now, new evidence points to an altogether different conclusion: Mozart may have died from kidney damage caused by a strep infection, possibly strep throat. Health.com: Can't stop coughing? 8 causes of chronic cough Dr. Richard H.C. Zegers of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues analyzed data from Vienna's death registry. Researchers had not previously analyzed the daily death registry -- begun in handwritten script in 1607 and maintained until 1920 -- for clues to Mozart's death.

Zegers and his team looked at information for 5,011 adults who died during three consecutive winters starting in 1790, as well as eyewitness accounts of Mozart's death, according to the study published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine.

"By looking at the patterns of death during Mozart's time and combining them with the signs and symptoms of his final disease, we have not one but two pillars on which our theory is built," said Zegers. "Although we can't be 100 percent conclusive, I'm convinced that we have come very near the exact reason he died."

The researchers found that there were more than 500 deaths related to edema, the swelling caused by fluid in the body's tissues. Edema was the third most common cause of death at the time, after tuberculosis and malnutrition/cachexia, a physical wasting-away that was possibly caused by cancer or diabetes. Health.com: Your nutrition needs in your 30s, 40s, and 50s

During the winter of 1791, there was a spike in edema-related deaths among younger men, possibly because of an epidemic of strep throat, according to Zegers. He and his colleagues suspect that the epidemic's origin was the local military hospital, since crowded quarters are more conducive to the rapid spread of airborne bacteria such as group A Streptococcus, which can cause strep throat.