For a small group of children, a fit of laughter can mean a fully emptied bladder, sometimes in front of classmates. Doctors in Melbourne, Australia, now report that injecting botulinum toxin directly into the bladder muscle stopped laughter-triggered wetting in 11 of 17 children with giggle incontinence, most of whom had already tried other treatments.
The results appear in a 2026 paper in Pediatric Surgery International that looked back over 12 years of procedures. The authors are E. Szwarcberg, C. Kimber, and K. Taghavi. Kimber heads pediatric urology and pediatric surgery at Monash Children's Hospital, Taghavi is a consultant pediatric urologist, and Szwarcberg is a medical intern at the hospital. They call the treatment effective and well tolerated, but they also say larger studies are needed.
