It is another alarm bell for all male smokers -- don't take that puff otherwise you might end up going bald.

The habit which is already a cause of 50 different diseases including lung cancer, heart disease and impotence can also turn men bald, a new research shows.

Male pattern baldness, which affects two-thirds of men as they grow older, is known to be partly caused by male sex hormones.

The research showed that puffing on cigarettes may worsen age-related hair loss in men because smokers are more likely to lose their hair than others.

Researchers, from the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in Taipei, carried out a study involving more than 700 Taiwanese men aged 40 and over and found out that the more a man smokes, the worse his baldness is likely to be.

As part of the research, the men were enquired about the age at which they started losing their hair, whether they had a family history of baldness and about their smoking history.

Their height and weight were also measured, and blood samples analysed.

The analysis of the results showed that the risk of hair loss increased with advancing age, but remained lower than the average risk for Caucasian men.

It also revealed a clear link between smoking and hair loss, with the heaviest smokers being most likely to suffer from male pattern baldness, even when a family history of the condition was taken into account.

Those who smoked 20 cigarettes or more a day were more than twice as likely to have moderate or severe hair loss than those who had never smoked.

The results, published in the journal Archives of Dermatology, showed the risk remained elevated even among those who had quit the habit, the Daily Mail reported.

Putting forward reasons for the effect, the researchers said smoking may damage the genetic structure of the hair follicles, the tiny structures responsible for hair growth.

Alternatively, it may harm cells at their roots needed for the circulation of blood and hormones.