If you haven’t given up smoking, now you have one more reason to do it. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore conducted a study on the effects of smoking on women. More exactly, they looked at their risk of stroke and what they found should alarm women of any age to think twice when they’re having a cigarette.

Smoking has long been linked to increased risk of heart disease and lung cancer or other types of cancers, but no study so far has analyzed the risk of stroke precisely in women.

For the study, Dr. John Cole, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and his colleagues interviewed 466 women who had had a stroke and 604 women who hadn’t. They were between the aged of 15 and 49 and were smokers, non-smokers or former smokers.

The study found that the risk of stroke was 2.2 times greater for women smoking 1 to 10 cigarettes a day, 4.3 times greater for those smoking 21 to 39 cigarettes a day and 9.1 times greater for those smoking more than two packs a day compared to nonsmokers.

Women who quitted smoking appeared to have had great benefit, the study found. Stroke risk declined as early as 30 days after quitting and returned to normal in about two years.

“The more you smoke, the more likely you are to have a stroke. Certainly quitting is the best thing you could do. But cutting back does offer some benefit,” Dr. Cole said.

The findings are more worrisome as almost a fifth of US women ages 18 to 24 are current smokers, the study found.

The findings are published in the August 15 issue of the journal Stroke.