Louisiana has the country's highest rates of STDs according to new study

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Americans living in the south could be most at risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a new study reveals.

Louisiana had the country's highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), which include chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and HIV.

It suffered 1,200 STD cases per 100,000 residents, making it the state most stricken by diseases that spread through sex, skin-to-skin contact and from mother to child during birth.

In particular, Louisiana had the highest rate of chlamydia, America's most common STD that affects 1.6million adults every year.

Mississippi and Alaska followed close behind with 1,084 and 1,067 STD cases per 100,000 people, respectively. Alaska also recorded the most instances of gonorrhea, which experts have previously blamed on weak public health infrastructure and high rates of substance abuse.

It's the same state where a woman died earlier this year of disseminated gonococcal infection (DGI), which occurs when the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea invades the bloodstream and travels to vital organs.

Meanwhile, Georgia, which had the fourth-highest overall STD rate, recorded the most HIV cases with 25.5 per 100,000.

South Dakota rounded out the top five, recording the highest rate of syphilis infections.

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The report also found women in the US are 10 percent more likely than men to be diagnosed with an STD, with a rate of 902 cases per 100,000 compared to 819. 

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