The cuts, revealed in AstraZeneca's full-year results for 2009, are on top of the 15,000 redundancies that it announced last January, due to be completed by 2013.

AstraZeneca currently employs around 11,000 people in the UK.

A spokesman for AstraZeneca did not rule out IT staff being affected. The new job cuts will affect all departments, including research and development, sales and marketing, and administration and operations.

It is not known how many of the roles will be outsourced. Historically, the company has outsourced a significant amount of its IT. In December 2008, it signed a multi-million pound to support manufacturing, supply chain, finance, human resources and other applications.

AstraZeneca also with IBM in 2007 to provide email, hosting, networking, PC management, server, storage and service management support.