Portal:Viruses/Selected article/2

Child with a deformed right leg due to poliomyelitis

Polio, also called poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis, was one of the most feared childhood diseases of the 20th century. Poliovirus, the causative agent, only naturally infects humans and spreads via the faecal–oral route. Most infections cause no or minor symptoms. In around 1% of cases, the virus enters the central nervous system, causing aseptic meningitis. There it can preferentially infect and destroy motor neurons, leading in 0.1–0.5% of cases to muscle weakness and acute flaccid paralysis. Spinal polio accounts for nearly 80% of paralytic cases, with asymmetric paralysis of the legs being typical; in a quarter of these cases permanent severe disability results. Bulbar involvement is rare, but in severe cases the virus can prevent breathing by affecting the phrenic nerve, so that patients require mechanical ventilation with an iron lung or similar device.

Depictions in ancient art show that the disease has existed for thousands of years. The virus was an endemic pathogen until the 1880s, when major epidemics began to occur in Europe and later the United States. Polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s and a global eradication campaign started in 1988. The annual incidence of wild-type disease fell from many hundreds of thousands to 22 in 2017, but has since resurged to a few hundreds.