Medical Geneticist Bettina Blaumeiser Issues Warning

Medical geneticist Bettina Blaumeiser has issued an urgent health warning regarding the growing need for genetic counselling in Flanders, particularly for couples planning to have children who carry a family history of hereditary conditions. Her remarks, made in an interview with Nieuwsblad titled “DOKTERSADVIES. Medisch geneticus Bettina Blaumeiser: ‘Hiervoor blijven we waarschuwen’,” emphasize the importance of preconception care and prenatal diagnosis in preventing severe hereditary disorders in offspring.

Blaumeiser, who serves as professor of medical genetics at the University of Antwerp and head of the medical genetics department at Antwerp University Hospital (UZA), warns that many individuals only seek genetic testing after becoming pregnant, missing critical opportunities for early intervention. She stresses that timely genetic counselling provides more options, including preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) during in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, which allows for the selection of embryos free of specific genetic mutations before implantation.

According to her UZA profile, Blaumeiser has been a practicing physician since 1994 and earned her PhD in 2007 with a dissertation on the genetic causes of alopecia areata. She is recognized as a gynaecologist and obstetrician in Belgium, Germany, and Norway, and since the formal recognition of medical genetics as a specialty in Belgium in 2017, she has also been registered as a clinical geneticist. Her expertise spans prenatal diagnosis, preconception care, hereditary cancer, complex genetic disorders, and Down syndrome.

Blaumeiser provides consultations both at the UZA campus and externally, maintaining a weekly schedule with appointments available by phone or email. Her clinical work includes supporting patients with significant genetic risks, such as women carrying BRCA mutations who face elevated risks of breast and ovarian cancer. In a previously published case on maguza.be from July 2011, she assisted a woman whose mother and grandmother had died young from breast cancer. After genetic counselling, the patient underwent IVF with PGD, resulting in the transfer of only embryos without the BRCA mutation.

Her contributions to medical genetics extend beyond clinical practice. Blaumeiser has served as an editor for peer-reviewed research, including a 2023 case report published in Frontiers in Genetics on the detection of fetal trisomy 9 mosaicism. She is also active in academic research, with her work indexed in major scientific databases such as ScienceDirect and Google Scholar, where her publications focus on prenatal diagnosis, complex genetics, and alopecia areata.

Through her public advocacy, Blaumeiser continues to highlight the value of integrating genetic counselling into routine reproductive planning, arguing that early assessment empowers individuals with informed choices and reduces the burden of preventable genetic conditions on families and healthcare systems.