'Encouraging' Ebola drug results in Guinea: researchers

For the first time since the west African Ebola outbreak began over a year ago, a clinical trial with a candidate treatment has yielded "encouraging" results, researchers announced Thursday. The trial with 80 patients in Guinea resulted in fewer deaths and faster recovery rates, the French government and medical research agency Inserm said of tests with the Japanese-manufactured anti-viral drug favipiravir. No scientific trial data has been made public, but the outcome was said to offer "hope" for tackling the haemorrhagic fever virus that has infected 22,495 people and killed 8,981 in the worst Ebola outbreak in history, according to the latest World Health Organization tally. "Encouraging results of the trial... will be submitted shortly to a scientific journal for publication," Inserm said in a statement to AFP.

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