Fertility doctors say a "three-person baby" has been born in Greece, using genetic material from two women and a man.

The technique was reportedly used to overcome the mother's infertility – she had tried IVF treatment four times without success.

The 32-year-old Greek mother then heard about a clinical trial of the new method by Spanish doctors.

The medical team in Barcelona used a technique called maternal spindle transfer (MST), in which maternal DNA is put into the egg of a donor woman, which is then fertilised using the father's sperm.

The technique hinges on cell structures called mitochondria which turn food sources into useable energy.

The procedure was developed to help existing IVF treatments in which mothers have mitochondrial diseases. To avoid passing these on, the nucleus in the donor woman's healthy egg is removed, and the mother's nucleus inserted. The vast majority of the mother's DNA is contained in the nucleus, but a small amount of DNA remains in the mitochondria in the donor egg.