A single injection of a chemotherapy drug can cure a common type of testicular cancer, researchers say.

Carboplatin, which is often used to treat ovarian and lung cancer, can replace radiotherapy to cure early-stage seminoma, which mainly affects men in their 40s, a study has found.

The drug is being hailed as a “safer cure” for the cancer by experts, with fewer long-term risks.

Testicular cancers are usually either seminomas or nonseminomas. About 40 to 45 per cent of testicular cancers are early-stage seminomas – accounting for 800 cases each year in Britain.

Patients are usually first treated with surgery to remove the testis where the disease is detected, but the cancer can develop in the other testis in one in 20 men.

Patients given carboplatin experienced fewer side-effects and were able to return to their normal lives earlier than those undergoing radiotherapy, prompting experts to hail the treatment as a “safer cure” for seminoma.

In the largest trial for the disease, funded by the Medical Research Council, a carboplatin injection was used to treat 573 patients with early-stage seminoma and compared with two or three weeks of daily radiotherapy, the standard treatment, given to 904 patients.

Of the patients given carboplatin, 5 per cent relapsed – virtually all within three years – and after further successful treatment, none had died from their testicular cancer.

Ben Mead, honorary senior lecturer in medical oncology at the University of Southampton, who led the study, said: “We were pleased by the results of this huge trial. Giving patients a carboplatin injection rather than radiotherapy is less unpleasant with fewer long-term risks.”

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