diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.2.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.2.0.rst
index bbdcd183f65e1..d34175b9c4feb 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.2.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.2.0.rst
@@ -748,6 +748,7 @@ I/O
 - Bumped minimum xarray version to 0.12.3 to avoid reference to the removed ``Panel`` class (:issue:`27101`)
 - :meth:`DataFrame.to_csv` was re-opening file-like handles that also implement ``os.PathLike`` (:issue:`38125`)
 - Bug in the conversion of a sliced ``pyarrow.Table`` with missing values to a DataFrame (:issue:`38525`)
+- Bug in :func:`read_sql_table` raising a ``sqlalchemy.exc.OperationalError`` when column names contained a percentage sign (:issue:`37517`)
 
 Period
 ^^^^^^
diff --git a/pandas/io/sql.py b/pandas/io/sql.py
index 5678133d5a706..02b06b164a2a1 100644
--- a/pandas/io/sql.py
+++ b/pandas/io/sql.py
@@ -1159,9 +1159,7 @@ def run_transaction(self):
 
     def execute(self, *args, **kwargs):
         """Simple passthrough to SQLAlchemy connectable"""
-        return self.connectable.execution_options(no_parameters=True).execute(
-            *args, **kwargs
-        )
+        return self.connectable.execution_options().execute(*args, **kwargs)
 
     def read_table(
         self,
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/test_sql.py b/pandas/tests/io/test_sql.py
index 0195b61d13798..15f65a9ce46c6 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/io/test_sql.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/io/test_sql.py
@@ -1125,6 +1125,15 @@ def test_query_by_select_obj(self):
         all_names = set(iris_df["Name"])
         assert all_names == {"Iris-setosa"}
 
+    def test_column_with_percentage(self):
+        # GH 37157
+        df = DataFrame({"A": [0, 1, 2], "%_variation": [3, 4, 5]})
+        df.to_sql("test_column_percentage", self.conn, index=False)
+
+        res = sql.read_sql_table("test_column_percentage", self.conn)
+
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(res, df)
+
 
 class _EngineToConnMixin:
     """