11/21/2025
How Millions of STI Infections are Missed Each Year
I want to share something as clearly and honestly as possible.
Genital-only STI testing misses most infections.
It is simply not enough. Three major studies published this year all show the same thing. Oral and a**l swabs find many infections that ge***al tests never detect. This is not new information. It is not controversial. It is just the reality of how STIs spread and where they actually live.
My own experience makes this painfully clear. I did what responsible people are supposed to do. I got a routine STI test. It came back negative. I felt relieved. I thought I was protecting my partners.
Then my partner texted me to tell me I had infected her.
I was stunned. I had literally just been told I was STI free. When I finally found someone willing to run an oral swab, it came back positive. Same infection. Same week. One test looked in the wrong place. The other looked exactly where the infection actually was.
The Latest Study
One of the newest studies reviewed findings from twenty five different studies. The positivity rates they found were not small. They were consistent and significant.
Re**al chlamydia
8.8 % positivity in women
2.1 % positivity in men
Re**al gonorrhea
2.9 % positivity in women
4.1 % positivity in men
Oral chlamydia
2.3 % positivity in women
1 % positivity in men
Oral gonorrhea
2.6 % positivity in women
2.4 % positivity in men
These are real infections happening in real people. Most of them would be completely missed by ge***al only testing.
Now consider this. The largest STI telemedicine companies have never tested a single oral or a**l swab. Not once. Which means they have never detected the very infections the research says are common. When you understand that, the amount of silent spread becomes obvious. The ripple effect is enormous.
People ask whether companies do not know or simply do not care.
Most regular physicians genuinely do not know, and that is understandable. They do not specialize in s*xual health.
But telemedicine companies that claim to be experts should know. And they could know. This information is not hidden. These studies are easy to find.
Honestly, if someone spent even a few weekends over the course of a decade thinking seriously about the field they work in, they would understand exactly what the science says.
So when a company keeps using ge***al only testing, it is clearly not because the research is difficult to find. It is everywhere. Which brings us to the real question.
Why would a company ignore it?
Shameless Care exists because accuracy matters. Your health and your partners health deserve testing based on reality, not shortcuts. We test every site where infections actually live because people deserve real answers.
Thank you for trusting us with your care.
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