A new study in Australia has found that babies born to older mothers are more likely to be healthy if conceived through IVF rather than naturally.

The findings were made following a survey of more than 300,000 live births carried out by a team in the University of Adelaide.

It revealed that women aged 40 or over were more than twice as likely to have a child with birth defects than women of the same age who had become pregnant using assisted reproduction.

For women over 40, the proportion of birth defects was 8.2% for those who conceived naturally against just a 3.6% chance for those who conceived using Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a type of IVF.

Commenting on the findings Professor Simon Fishel, President of Beacon CARE Fertility said: “These results are extremely interesting but we would need to see greater numbers of women in the older category to make conclusive findings".

"It appears however, that during conception, several errors occur at fertilisation and by using IVF it is possible to observe and eliminate these errors of fertilisation."

Singer Janet Jackson recently confirmed she is expecting a baby at 50 years old.