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Polio, also called poliomyelitis, or infantile paralysis, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus.
Polio causes muscle weakness, resulting in an inability to move in roughly one half percent of people, who are infected with the virus.
This can occur over a few hours, to a few days.
The weakness most often involves the legs, but can also include the muscles of the head, neck, and diaphragm.
Many people fully recover, but there is a risk of death. About 2 to 5 percent of children, and 15 to 30 percent of adults die, if they develop muscle weakness.
Another 25 percent of people infected have minor symptoms such as fever, and a sore throat, that resolve in one to two weeks . Five percent have headache, neck stiffness, and pains in the arms and legs. About 70 percent of infections have no symptoms at all.
Years after recovery, post-polio syndrome may occur with a slow development of muscle weakness, similar to the person's original symptoms.
Poliovirus is usually spread from person to person through infected fecal matter entering the mouth, from food or water containing human feces, and less commonly from infected saliva.
Those who are infected may spread the disease for up to six weeks, even if no symptoms are present.
The disease may be diagnosed by finding the virus in the feces, or detecting antibodies against it in the blood. The disease only occurs naturally in humans.
Polio is preventable with the polio vaccine; however, multiple doses are required for it to be effective.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends polio vaccination boosters for travelers, and those who live in countries where the disease is occurring.
Once infected there is no specific treatment. In 2024, there were 98 cases of wild polio, and over 190 cases of vaccine-derived polio. This is down from 350,000 wild cases in 1988. In 2024, the disease was only spread between people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Poliomyelitis has existed for thousands of years, with depictions of the disease in ancient art. The disease was first recognized as a distinct condition by the English physician Michael Underwood in 1789, and the virus that causes it was first identified in 1908 by the Austrian immunologist Karl Landsteiner.
Major outbreaks started to occur in the late 19th century, in Europe and the United States. In the 20th century it became one of the most worrying childhood diseases in these areas.
The first effective polio vaccine was developed in the 1950s by Jonas Salk. In 2013, the World Health Organization hoped that vaccination efforts, and early detection of cases would result in global eradication of the disease by 2018. This has obviously not occurred, and there are concerns the disease is re-emerging.