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Content is anchored to trusted sources where available, but Compass has not yet been clinically reviewed. It provides general information rather than medical advice.

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Treatments and research

Endpoint

The specific thing a trial measures to decide whether the treatment worked.

What it means

Chosen and written down before the trial starts, so the answer cannot be picked afterwards from whatever looked best. A trial can miss its main endpoint and still show something interesting elsewhere, and that distinction is worth watching for in headlines.

Why you might hear it

  • Results are usually reported as meeting or missing the primary endpoint.
  • In ALS/MND the main endpoint is often a functional score.

Where Compass goes into this

About this explanation

These are plain explanations of words you may come across, not advice about your own situation. Where a word matters to a decision, the question pages go into it properly, and your own team is the place to take it.