Rubulavirus
If not vaccinated against mumps, susceptible individuals catch the disease by breathing around an infected person who has coughed or sneezed, releasing their contaminated saliva. Those who have had mumps are usually immune to future infections of the disease. Children have the highest risk of catching mumps, and it is rare for an adult to contract mumps. The incubation period for mumps can range from a couple weeks to a month, while the illness period is a few weeks. The swelling of the salivary glands is caused when the virus travels from the respiratory tract to the salivary glands and multiplies within the glands, causing the glands to swell.
Mumps
Mumps is usually preceded by a set of prodromal symptoms including low-grade fever, headache, and malaise. This is followed by progressive swelling of one or both parotid glands. Parotid gland swelling usually lasts about one week. Other symptoms of mumps can include dry mouth, sore face and/or ears and some patients find it difficult to talk. A vaccine has been available since the 1960s.The mumps virus is an enveloped single-stranded, linear negative-sense RNA virus of the genus "Rubulavirus" and family "Paramyxovirus". The genome consists of 15,384 bases encoding nine proteins. Proteins involved in viral replication are the nucleoprotein, phosphoprotein, and polymerase protein while the genomic RNA forms the ribonucleocapsid. Humans are the only natural host for the virus.