Terms of Use

1. Using our website and community

These Terms of Use apply to tmau-international.com and the TMAU International Community hosted using Discourse (together, the “Services”). By using the informational website, you agree to the provisions that apply to it. By registering for or participating in the community, you agree to all of these Terms and to the Community Guidelines displayed within the community. If you do not agree, please do not use the relevant Service.

TMAU International provides general information about trimethylaminuria (TMAU), research, support, and advocacy, together with a member discussion space. We may change, add, or remove content and features as our work develops.

The community runs on services supplied by Discourse. Your use of Discourse ID or another Discourse-controlled service may also be subject to the applicable Discourse ID User Terms ↗ and Discourse Privacy Policy ↗.

2. Eligibility and accounts

The TMAU International Community is currently limited to people aged 18 or older. By registering, you confirm that you are at least 18 years old, or the age of majority in your jurisdiction if that is higher, and are legally able to agree to these Terms.

You must provide accurate account information, keep your sign-in credentials secure, and promptly tell us if you believe your account has been compromised. Do not share an account, impersonate another person or organisation, or create an account for someone else without appropriate authority. You may use a pseudonymous public username and are encouraged not to use your full legal name.

Registration does not guarantee admission or continued access. The community requires sign-in, and we review new registrations before granting community access. We may refuse or revoke access where reasonably necessary to protect members, enforce these Terms, or operate the community responsibly.

3. Educational information and peer discussion, not medical advice

Nothing in the Services—including material posted by TMAU International, staff, volunteers, or community members—is medical advice, a diagnosis, a treatment recommendation, or a substitute for professional clinical care. Community contributions reflect the knowledge, opinions, and personal experiences of their authors and are not necessarily verified or endorsed by TMAU International.

TMAU can affect people in different ways, and research continues to develop. Always seek advice from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional about your own health, symptoms, diagnosis, medication, diet, supplements, or treatment. Do not begin, stop, or change prescribed care solely because of something posted through the Services.

Do not delay seeking care because of information in the Services. If you are in immediate danger or experiencing an emergency, contact your local emergency services or urgent-care provider. Using the Services or communicating with TMAU International, its staff, volunteers, or members does not create a clinician-patient, therapeutic, legal, fiduciary, or other professional relationship.

4. Community conduct

Members must follow the Community Guidelines and treat others with dignity. You must not use the community to:

• harass, threaten, shame, stalk, bully, or discriminate against another person;
• publish another person’s identity, contact details, health information, messages, images, or other private material without permission;
• present an unsupported cure claim, dangerous instruction, or individual diagnosis as established fact;
• encourage someone to stop prescribed care or undertake an unsafe dose, extreme restriction, or other potentially harmful practice;
• impersonate another person, misrepresent qualifications, manipulate members, or engage in fraud;
• advertise, recruit, solicit money, conduct research on members, or promote a commercial product without prior written permission from TMAU International; or
• post unlawful, sexually exploitative, malicious, infringing, or technically harmful material.

Personal experiences may be shared when clearly described as personal experience. Respectful disagreement is permitted; abuse, misinformation presented deceptively, and conduct that places others at unreasonable risk are not.

5. Member content, privacy, and permissions

You remain responsible for content you submit and must have the right to share it. You retain any ownership rights you hold in that content. By submitting it, you grant TMAU International and its service providers a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, format, display, transmit, back up, and moderate it to the extent reasonably necessary to operate, secure, administer, and provide the community.

The community is access-restricted, but it is not a confidential healthcare service. Anything posted in a community area can be read by every member permitted to access that area, and another member may copy or disclose it. Do not publish medical records, identifying documents, contact details, or information you would not want other approved members to see.

Personal messages are not end-to-end encrypted, and community administrators can access their content. Personal messages and direct chats should not be treated as absolutely private. Recipients can copy or report them, and relevant material may be reviewed through platform-administration, moderation, safety, security, technical-support, or legal-compliance processes.

If an account is closed, contributions may be retained under an anonymised username where reasonably necessary to preserve coherent discussions, subject to applicable law and our Privacy Policy.

6. Moderation and enforcement

We may review reported material and take proportionate action, including editing or removing content, issuing warnings, limiting features, closing discussions, silencing, suspending or terminating accounts, preserving relevant records, and referring a matter to a service provider or lawful authority. We may act without advance notice where reasonably necessary to protect a person, the community, the Services, or legal rights.

We are not required to monitor every contribution and cannot guarantee that all inaccurate, offensive, harmful, or unlawful material will be identified immediately. A moderation decision does not mean that we endorse other material that remains available.

If you believe a decision affecting you was made in error, contact info@tmau-international.com with enough information for us to locate and review the matter. Repeated, abusive, or bad-faith appeals may not receive further response.

7. Responsible use

You may use the Services for lawful, personal, non-commercial purposes. You must not:

• interfere with, damage, scrape, overload, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Services, accounts, or systems;
• circumvent access restrictions, moderation controls, suspensions, or security measures;
• use the Services in a way that is unlawful, harmful, misleading, abusive, or likely to disrupt others’ use;
• copy, republish, sell, train an automated system on, or exploit original site or member content beyond reasonable personal use without permission; or
• use the Services or contact details obtained through them to send spam, unwanted solicitations, harmful material, or malicious software.

8. Research summaries and external links

Our research pages aim to make complex subjects easier to understand and to show areas that may matter to the TMAU community. Science evolves. A summary cannot cover every study, viewpoint, limitation, or development, and it may become out of date.

External links are provided for convenience and further reading. TMAU International does not control or endorse third-party websites, their content, availability, or privacy practices. Copyright in third-party papers, publications, images, and linked material belongs to the relevant owners.

9. Newsletter and future services

The newsletter sign-up is available through this website. It requires an active opt-in and email confirmation before an address is added to the mailing list. Details of how newsletter information is handled are set out in our Privacy Policy.

The AI-assisted research library and online donation facilities described elsewhere on the website are not currently available through this site. If we introduce either service, we may publish additional terms, consent information, and privacy disclosures before it becomes available.

Do not assume that a future contribution will be tax-deductible unless the relevant donation process clearly says so.

10. Intellectual property

The TMAU International name, logo, website design, and original site content are protected by applicable intellectual-property laws. You may share links to our pages and make reasonable personal use of the material. You may not reproduce substantial parts of the site or use our branding in a way that suggests endorsement without our written permission.

11. Availability, accuracy, and liability

We aim to keep the Services useful and available, but do not guarantee that they will always be complete, current, secure, error-free, or continuously available. We do not guarantee the identity, qualifications, accuracy, conduct, or reliability of any member or contribution. To the fullest extent permitted by law, TMAU International is not liable for losses arising from use of, inability to use, or reliance on the Services, member contributions, or third-party links.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

12. Suspension, termination, and service changes

You may stop using the Services at any time and may request closure or anonymisation of a community account as described in our Privacy Policy. We may suspend or end access, discontinue a feature, or close the community where reasonably necessary. Provisions that by their nature should continue—including provisions about member content, intellectual property, moderation records, disclaimers, and liability—remain applicable after access ends.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Services or our obligations change. We will post the updated version here and revise the “Last updated” date. Where appropriate, we may also notify community members through the forum. Continued use after an update takes effect means you accept the updated Terms; where law requires further notice or consent, we will provide it.

14. Contact us

Questions about these Terms may be sent to: