An Israeli company has created a pill for diabetes sufferers that could delay the worst symptoms of the disease.

Insulin injections have been the best way to control blood sugar levels in people with diabetes - 422 million at present - for more than 90 years, but Jerusalem-based Oramed has developed what they say is a better alternative.

Josh Hexter, Oramed's chief operating officer, said that when it came to insulin, "taking it as a pill is much more effective. It is absorbed by the pancreas to the liver and to the rest of the body, which mimics the way the body actually gives itself insulin".

He explained that this reduced the chances of excess insulin causing blood sugar to fall to a dangerously low level. The pill, which should be on the market by the end of the year, also had "psychological value", Mr Hexter said, because for most patients, "daily injection therapy is their second, third or even fourth choice".

Without the continual pain of injections, insulin could be administered earlier, which he said studies had shown would allow patients to "stave off the later stages of the disease."

A higher life expectancy for sufferers would reduce the 1.5 million deaths from the disease every year.

Mr Hexter said that because diabetes was "a global epidemic", there was "a huge market potential, as well as the potential to give a big benefit to these patients by getting it to them early".

The drug has passed phase two of its clinical trials.