A little biology lesson first. There are two types of cholesterols. There is the good and the bad kind. The good kind is the high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and the bad kind is the low-density lipoprotein. You want more of HDL and low levels of LDL. HDL will protect you from heart attacks and strokes, while LDL will cause just that by depositing on the walls of the blood vessels. Usually, the HDL will transport the LDL to the liver to be flushed out, because high levels of LDL are dangerous. Now that we have dispensed with that, let’s get into how the waxy substance that is cholesterol, can be a big menace.

Pre-eclampsia is one of the hypertensive disorders in pregnancy that cause maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality. Preeclampsia is often manifested through high blood pressure, with increased protein levels in urine (proteinuria) after 20 weeks of gestation. It complicates about five per cent of pregnancies worldwide and affects about 5.6 per cent to 6.5 per cent of pregnant women in Kenya.