A major scientific breakthrough could pave the way for treatments that allow older women to have children.

It has always been believed that women have a limited number of eggs that cannot be increased, but that theory could be debunked after it was revealed that ovaries may be able to grow new ones.

According to The Guardian, a study was undertaken at the University of Edinburgh that showed women suffering from cancer and taking chemotherapy drug ABVD had a far greater density of eggs than healthy women with otherwise similar characteristics.

Professor Evelyn Telfer, who led the study, said: 'This was something remarkable and completely unexpected for us. The tissue appeared to have formed new eggs.

A study showed women suffering from cancer and taking chemotherapy drugs have far more eggs than healthy women with otherwise similar characteristics (file image)

'The dogma is that the human ovary has a fixed population of eggs and that no new eggs form throughout life.'

However, there are other explanations for the findings, including that the stress of the extreme treatment caused the eggs to divide.

Prof Telfer added: 'There’s so much we don’t know about the ovary.

'We have to be very cautious about jumping to clinical applications.'

Most women are born with an average of two million eggs, but every month, they lose up to 1,500 eggs.

By the time she is 30, the average woman has 70,000 eggs remaining, which drops to 30,000 when she is 35 and 25,000 when she is 37.5.

Figures released last week revealed the fertility rate for women aged 40 and over has risen above that for the under-20s for the first time since 1947.

The report, from the Office for National Statistics for England and Wales, found there were 15.2 live births per 1,000 women aged 40 and over in 2015.

This is compared to 14.5 for those aged under 20.

In 1981, the rate was 4.9 for women aged 40 and over compared to 28.1 for women under 20.

Meanwhile other women experience the agony of premature menopause.

In the UK, the average age of menopause is 51, and comes when a woman’s natural supply of oestrogen dwindles and her ovaries run out of eggs.

The top left image, showing tissue from ABVD treated patients appears to show more follicles and a higher density of eggs

But while most women first experience menopause symptoms in their late 40s and early 50s, a lot of women do get them much earlier.

One study estimated that as many as one in 20 women goes through early menopause.

If a woman is under 40, it’s called premature menopause; for those between 40 and 45, it’s referred to as early-onset menopause.

The news has got their peers in the field excited about its possible meanings.