Promiscuous? Where Myrtle Beach ranks among the top 100 U.S. cities for STD cases
Myrtle Beach has proudly placed high in rankings of such things as the nation’s top beaches, tourist destinations and golf destinations.
The city would have preferred it was left off a list released this week by the wellness website Innerbody.com.
Myrtle Beach ranked 92nd in the country in sexually transmitted disease cases per capita in 2018, the most recent year of the list.
Cities were ranked according to the number of reported STD cases per 100,000 population, and the top-100 ranking is based on analysis by the Innerbody.com research team of an STD study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The ranked cases include four diseases – HIV, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea. Herpes was not included in the study.
Myrtle Beach had a reported 814 cases per 100,000 people in a metro area population measured at 344,147. Most of the 2,872 total cases were chlamydia and gonorrhea, with 70 cases of HIV and 26 of syphilis.
Baltimore led the nation with 2,004 cases per 100,000 population.
Myrtle Beach’s reported cases may skew higher than some other areas based on the large number of tourists that visit the area, particularly in the summer.
The CDC recently released its latest Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report, along with new data on the number of reported venereal diseases across U.S. counties and metro areas.
It reported more than 2.4 million combined STD cases in 2018 and acknowledged there are likely many unreported cases of diseases that were asymptomatic.
Innerbody.com is an online health testing guide that provides more than a million monthly visitors with advice on all types of medical, health and wellness tests, specializing in tests that individuals can take at home, according to its co-founder and managing editor Eric Rodriguez. It has been online since 1998.
Innerbody.com and the CDC show that STD rates continue to run rampant in the South. Nearly half of the top 25 cities and seven of the top 10 states with the highest STD rates are in the South. As a state, South Carolina’s STD infection rate ranked fourth in the nation with 957 cases per 100,000 people.
Alaska had the most with 1,144 cases per 100,000 population and was followed by Mississippi and Louisiana, each with more than 1,000 cases per 100,000.
California led all states with the most total reported cases as well as cities in the Top 100 with seven. Ohio and Texas had six cities each.
The CDC report reveals combined cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia reached an all-time high in the United States in 2018.
Gonorrhea increased 5 percent to more than 580,000 cases, the highest number reported since 1991, and chlamydia increased 3 percent to more than 1.7 million cases, the most ever reported to CDC.
There were more than 115,000 syphilis cases and the number of primary and secondary syphilis cases – the most infectious stages of syphilis – increased 14 percent to more than 35,000 cases, which is also the highest number reported since 1991.
Antibiotics can cure syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. But the CDC warns if they are left untreated, STDs can be transmitted to others and produce adverse health outcomes such as infertility, ectopic pregnancy and increased HIV risk.
Congenital syphilis – which is passed from a mother to her baby during pregnancy – can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, newborn death, and severe lifelong physical and neurological problems. The CDC reports newborn deaths related to congenital syphilis increased from 77 in 2017 to 94 in 2018.
