Allergies affect a third of Scots and cost the country's health service £130 million a year.

GPs consultations for asthma alone create an annual bill of £786,000, according to a study published on Saturday.

The report, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, found that Scots are more likely to suffer from life-long allergies than people south of the border.

People in Scotland are particularly prone to suffer from permenant eczema, asthma and allergic rhinitis. More than four percent of GP appointment and 1.5% of hospital admissions were for allergic disorders.

Now, health experts have described healthcare services for allergy sufferers as "lamentable" and called on the Government to invest in improving care provision.

One of the main authors of the study was Professor Aziz Sheikh, Head of the Allergy & Respiratory Research Group at The University of Edinburgh.

He said: "This report has, for the first time, concentrated solely on the Scottish context and reveals that people in Scotland are more likely to suffer from an allergy at some point in their lives than someone in England.

"Clinical provision in Scotland is overall lamentable. We currently do not have nearly enough expertise in general practice or specialist centres where patients with severe and complex allergic disease can be assessed and managed.

"There is also a need for ongoing monitoring of allergy disease trends in Scotland and a pressing need to better understand why so many people are now affected and what can be done to reverse this trend."

Professor Jurgen Schwarze from The University of Edinburgh, said: "Scotland urgently needs additional investment into sustainable and equitable allergy services in order to ensure those suffering from allergies receive care at the level appropriate to their clinical need in primary, secondary or tertiary care.

"An added benefit of well developed allergy services would be that Scotland, with its high prevalence of allergic disease, its stable population, and the ability to follow patients for a lifetime through their NHS registration number, will lend itself to become an internationally leading hub for allergy research."