Polio

Polio is a contagious disease caused by poliovirus. It can invade the nervous system, causing irreversible paralysis or death, though most infections cause no symptoms.

Poliovirus: A human enterovirus that replicates in the throat and intestine and can invade the central nervous system. This virus causes polio; its rare invasion of motor neurons produces the disease’s most severe effects.
Inactivated polio vaccine: A vaccine made from poliovirus rendered unable to replicate, administered by injection. It prevents paralysis and cannot cause vaccine-associated paralytic polio.
Polio epidemics: Recurring outbreaks of poliovirus infection that became more visible in many countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Large outbreaks made polio a defining public-health threat before widespread vaccination.
Guillain–Barré syndrome: An acute immune-mediated disorder in which peripheral nerve damage causes weakness and sometimes paralysis. It can resemble paralytic polio clinically but has a different cause and affects peripheral nerves.
Fecal–oral route: Transmission of infectious agents through particles of feces that reach another person’s mouth. Poliovirus commonly spreads this way, especially where sanitation is inadequate.
Oral polio vaccine: A live, weakened poliovirus vaccine given by mouth that induces intestinal immunity. Its ease of delivery and strong gut immunity made it central to mass campaigns.
Karl Landsteiner: An Austrian-American physician and immunologist who helped identify poliovirus in 1908. His work with Erwin Popper established that polio was caused by a filterable infectious agent.
Enterovirus D68: A respiratory enterovirus that can rarely cause acute flaccid myelitis, especially in children. Its outbreaks can produce polio-like limb weakness without being caused by poliovirus.
Anterior horn cell: A motor neuron in the spinal cord’s anterior gray matter that sends signals to skeletal muscles. Poliovirus destruction of these cells can leave muscles permanently weak or paralyzed.
Polio eradication: The global public-health effort to permanently interrupt transmission of poliovirus. Polio is one of the few diseases targeted for worldwide eradication through vaccination.

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