Women struggling to have a baby because of their age could be helped by scientists to produce more eggs.

Many face the agonising decision to give up on having their own child and use eggs donated by another women to become pregnant.

But a fertility breakthrough could help those unable to use their own eggs in later life because they have too few of poor quality.

Scientists have found more eggs can be harvested from polar bodies – small cells which form as waste products when egg cells divide and contain the same genetic material.

Human eggs can be regenerated by making use of genetic material that normally goes to waste, scientists have discovered

Women do not use these polar bodies normally, but when they are transplanted into an empty cell they become eggs.

Remarkably, scientists have been able to create a successful embryo after fertilising them with sperm.

The research, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, provides hope that women could harvest extra eggs from their own body.

This could create more embryos to be put back inside them, potentially doubling their chances of falling pregnant and having a baby through IVF.

Crucially, although their genetic material is still transplanted into an egg donated by another woman, the baby would be their own.

Human trials of the technique, which worked successfully in cells, may still be some years off.

However the study's co-author Hong Ma, from Oregon Health and Science University, said: 'Normally, polar bodies disintegrate and disappear during egg development.

'We were able to recycle them. We hope that by doing this, we can double the number of patient eggs available for in vitro fertilization (IVF).'

Experts say the development has the potential to revolutionise fertility treatment, particularly for older women

While promising research has already been conducted into making egg cells from human skin cells, this is the first to look at polar bodies.

These small cells are created when egg cells divide unevenly, first when an egg cell divides to create a daughter cell and then again when that daughter cell divides to make a mature egg.

But the polar bodies are normally lost as they 'kill themselves ' in the body through apoptosis – or programmed cell death.

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The researchers, from Oregon and the Salk Institute in California, rescued the cells to transplant them.

The study is important because older women's own eggs fall rapidly in number after the age of 35, while many have an abnormal number of chromosomes, raising the risk of miscarriage.

It is hoped polar bodies will help top up this failing supply, improving the chances of having a baby.

It also opens up the option of transplanting an older woman's genetic material into a younger woman's egg, which would reduce the risk of these chromosome faults. A younger egg means less risk of errors being introduced when the cells divide.

Professor Dagan Wells, associate professor at Oxford University's NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, said: 'The work is technically impressive and may, in the future, provide another option for patients hoping to avoid of conditions caused by the inheritance of defective mitochondria.

'It is particularly interesting that the scientists involved were able to use the genetic material from the polar body, a cell which is discarded by the egg as it matures and is traditionally thought of as being little more than a dustbin for the chromosomes that the egg needs to discard in order to make way for those that will be delivered by the sperm.'

But he added: 'Unfortunately, the chromosome abnormalities seen in the egg tend to be mirrored in the polar body, so most abnormal eggs will also have abnormal polar bodies.