People smoke tobacco outside the church of San Simon in Iztapa, in the region of Escuintla, around 62 km (39 miles), from Guatemala City, October 28, 2013

A recent study confirms that smoking makes your face grow old faster.

Ohio researchers have come to a conclusion that the skin around the lips apparently get old on a faster pace for a smoker. There are also more possibilities of getting eye bags as well as wrinkles. The research was performed with twin siblings, one of whom happened to be a smoker while the other was not. This can be the confirmation of the age-old belief that smoking does make you look old fast, CNN reports.

The researchers at the Department of Plastic Surgery at Case Western Reserve University studied 79 sets of twin siblings who were aged between 18 and 78. It was performed at the annual August gathering of twins in Twinsburg, Ohio.

Every person was photographed by a professional. Those photos were then divided in two categories. The first category consisted of 45 sets of twins, which had one smoker and one non-smoker. The habit of smoking had to be at least 5 years or longer than the other twin. A medical student, along with a couple of doctors, studies the photographs. The faces were assigned scores in accordance with the facial features they had. The smoking twin seemed to be 57 per cent older than the non-smoking one, while in the second set, the twin who smoked for a longer period looked older in 63 per cent of cases.

Dr Bahman Guyuron was the one who led the entire research. He said that the study was a confirmation in the most scientific manner possible of what had been believed for long. Each smoking twin may have exhibited further signs of aging with a longer follow-up of the study, he said.

The study focused on other factors related to aging such as stress, use of sunscreen and alcohol consumption. It was found that those did not mark any significant difference in the sets of twins unlike smoking. Dr Guyuron informed that smoking was responsible for the reduction of collagen formation which resulted in the degradation of collagen and the reduction of skin circulation. Nicotine is also responsible for reducing the thickness of the skin. All these factors cause premature aging, he said.

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is the journal that published the study.