Mumps is a contagious disease that causes painful swelling below and in front of the ears. Mumps is also called parotitis because it affects chiefly the parotid (salivary) glands in the cheeks. The swelling occurs in these glands. Mumps is caused by a virus in the saliva of an infected person.
Symptoms appear about 18 days after contact with the mumps virus. They include fever, headache, muscle ache, and sometimes vomiting. Then swelling begins in one or both parotid glands. The pain of the swollen glands may make it difficult for the patient to chew or swallow. Mumps may also attack the salivary glands under the jaw. The swelling lasts about a week.
Most cases of mumps are not serious. But the disease may also affect other parts of the body. The mumps virus may attack the central nervous system, causing extremely high fever, severe headache, and nausea. It causes particularly painful swelling when it occurs in one or both testicles of an adult male. The virus also can infect the ovaries of a female. It only rarely makes a man or a woman sterile (unable to produce children).
About a third of the people who become infected with the mumps virus do not develop any symptoms. But they can still infect others. A person with mumps can transmit the disease as early as seven days before the swelling appears and up to nine days after.
No drug affects the mumps virus in a person who has the disease. But a mumps vaccine, which became available in the late 1960’s, provides immunity (protection) from the disease.
