St. Louis briefly lost its crown as the STD capital of America — but it was a mistake

St. Louis again has the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases — an unenviable distinction that the city has held for more than a decade.

But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday that it appeared for several weeks that Etowah County, Ala., had dethroned St. Louis as the area with the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea, but that was due to inaccurate numbers. The Alabama Department of Public Health recently updated its numbers, which resulted in much lower figures for Etowah County.

St. Louis has about one diagnosis of gonorrhea for every 133 people and about one diagnosis of chlamydia for every 72 people.

Those are tops in the nation, the Post-Dispatch reported. The paper added that the numbers may be skewed because the city of St. Louis is compared with counties in the data.

Nationwide, more than 2 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported in 2016, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, which compiled the statistics. More than three-fourths of the new cases were chlamydia.

Though all three can be cured, if left untreated they can cause health problems including infertility, stillbirths and increased risk for HIV transmission.

The impact of STDs is growing for women, infants and gay and bisexual men, the CDC reported.

This story was originally published October 10, 2017 at 3:02 PM with the headline "St. Louis briefly lost its crown as the STD capital of America — but it was a mistake."