Research is being undertaken to create a groundbreaking treatment that would allow patients to inhale drugs rather than use a needle and syringe.

The treatment created by Scottish scientists would use `microcrystal' treatments for patients who require injections for diabetes, cancer or vaccinations.

This new treatment would provide help to the nearly one in six people who have a fear of needles.

Marie-Claire Parker, chief executive of XstalBio Limited, a spin-off from Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, explained that the new system for patients to receive their medication could be available within five years.

The medication would be inhaled by using a puffer. Patients would inhale a cloud of crystals in through the mouth. The crystals travel into the lungs and then into the blood stream. Each crystal measures only a millionth of a metre and would be coated in the drug.

The drugs that would work with the new system are protein-based such as interferon for the treatment of hepatitis C, insulin for diabetes and herceptin for breast cancer.

These protein-based medicines are currently given intravenously, because if they were taken as tablets they would be digested in the stomach.

Childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella as well as the flu would also be suitable for the new technology.

Ms Parker told Scotland on Sunday: "We are interested in getting drugs into patients in the most effective way. Inhalation is a way of getting them into the body which is safer and easier for the patient to take. You are not dealing with an injection, and often the person taking the medicine doesn't really want an injection. If you are taking a drug by a much friendlier route, uptake is higher.

Maria Leadbeater, a clinical nurse specialist for Breast Cancer Care, said: "We know that cancer treatment is one area of medicine that is constantly moving forward. Injections are very invasive and can be very difficult for cancer patients, and we often have to bring them into hospital for them.

"I know that 30 years ago, when chemotherapy was not used as widely, it was not thought oral chemotherapy was likely, but now we have got it."