According to a new study younger women who smoke stand more than double the stroke risks compared to their non smoking counterparts. The study, published in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke said that the risk is directly related to the number of cigarettes the woman smokes with it rising to nine times the risk for the heaviest smokers.

Dr. John Cole, the study's corresponding author and an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore said, "there is not a lot of data out there on the actual dose response," though he said smoking has been clearly established to increase the stroke risks.

Women who smoked one to 10 cigarettes per day faced a 2.2 times greater risk, while the risk went up to 4.3 times for those who smoked 21-39 cigarettes per day and went up to as much as 9.1 times for those who smoked two or more packs or 40 cigarettes a day as compared to non smokers.

Known to increase the risk of lung and other types of cancer, lung disease and heart disease, smoking has long since been associated with these major health risks and the study focused on the rise of stroke risks with smoking.  Quitting smoking helped decrease the stroke risk rates as early as 30 days with the risk rates taking two years to return to normal. "The more you smoke, the more likely you are to have a stroke," said Cole. "Certainly quitting is the best thing you could do. But cutting back does offer some benefit.”

Typically strokes are know to strike people in an older age bracket than were studied in the program but the rise in risk rates was demonstrated even in the younger women. Dr. David A. Meyerson, director of cardiology consultative services at Johns Hopkins University Bayview Medical Center, and a spokesman for the American Heart Association said, "Cigarettes, among other tobacco products, are the only products that when used as directed are still guaranteed to do harm."

"There are four major reasons why.  Smoking disrupts the cells lining the blood vessels. It increases blood fibrogen levels, which makes blood more likely to clot. It increases the stickiness of platelets, the cells that form blood clots, and it also decreases the body's natural clot-dissolving mechanism" Meyerson added.

Approximately 20 percent of young American women are smokers and those who are unconcerned about smoking's link to stroke should also know that it causes premature aging, Meyerson said.

Meyerson called the new study valuable "because of its size and its ethnic diversity. We see broadly how it applies to all young women."

A similar study on young men is planned said Cole.