If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer and keep smoking cigarettes, you are asking for trouble big time.

A new study has found that women who get the diagnosis and yet keep smoking are less likely to survive than both those who don’t smoke and those who decide to throw away the pack for good after being diagnosed, according to a Financial Express report.

Michael Passarelli, a cancer epidemiologist from the University of California who led the study, said according to the report that women have better outcomes if they get rid of the cigarettes one diagnosed.

In addition, those who keep smoking are more likely to die from other diseases, like strokes, heart disease, and respiratory cancers.

Researchers examined data from 20,000 women from the study who were of nearly all ages, and mostly white. They had all received breast cancer daignoses at some point between 1988 and 2008.

Researchers reached out to 4,500 of the women six years after they had been diagnosed to find out if they were sitll smoking.

They also followed up 12 years after the diagnosis, and found that 6,800 women had died, with 2,900 of them being due to breast cancer. The results showed that active smokers before the diagnosis were 25 percent more likely to die than non-smokers.

Those who kept smoking after the diagnosis were 72 percent more likely to die of breast cancer. About 10 percent of women fell into this category.

And those who quit smoking after the diagnosis were 33 percent less likely to die compared to the women who continued to smoke, the study found.

The findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.