Christina Applegate at the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, on February 26, 2023.
Since 2021, Christina Applegate has been one of the most famous advocates for living with multiple sclerosis. Now she says she has discovered that she doesn’t actually have the disease.
Applegate shared the shocking news Tuesday during an episode of the podcast she hosts with the actress and MS patient Jamie Lynn Sigler about life with MS, “MeSsy.”
Sigler had been hosting the podcast solo for seven months while Applegate dealt with her worsening health. Talking to Sigler in her return appearance, Applegate got emotional when she described how her doctor had told her that recent test results had ruled out the condition.
“It’s hard to say, but she came into my room and she said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS.’” Applegate said. “I was like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
MS is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body’s own healthy cells, affecting the nervous system. It can be debilitating for some. For Applegate, her previous diagnosis of MS had offered an explanation for her ongoing struggle with symptoms including tingling and numbness in her extremities, lack of coordination, balance issues and difficulty walking.
Earlier this year, the “Married With Children” star told People magazine she had been spending most of her time in bed because she has been so ill.
Recent testing utilizing new technology led to the conclusion that she does not have MS.
“This may come as good news…but I’m back at square one,” Applegate said tearfully on the podcast.
The finding is not as surprising as it sounds.
A study titled “Incidence of multiple sclerosis misdiagnosis in referrals to two academic centers” found that nearly 1 in 5 patients with an MS diagnosis did not fully meet the criteria for the disease and “had a much more likely alternate diagnosis.”
Applegate and Sigler addressed that during their two-part podcast episode, with a guest appearance by one of the authors of that study Dr. Marwa Kaisey, an associate professor with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center department of neurology.
Kaisey told them that some people had gone on for years with a misdiagnosis of MS, and many of them were prescribed medication to treat it.
The doctor talked about what she referred to as the “push and pull of the diagnostic process.”
“We’re so eager to get people diagnosed because we know that the earlier we start them on treatment the better they’re going to do decades from then,” Kaisey said. “But at the same time we have to be really careful to give them the accurate diagnosis.”
Applegate has had a rough time of it since her initial, now apparently wrong, diagnosis.
Her health deteriorated to the point that she had to leave her hit Netflix series “Dead to Me” which concluded with season three in November 2022.
She authored a memoir titled “You With the Sad Eyes,” which addressed the condition. During the podcast, she told Sigler that the pair of them had become “the poster children for MS.”
Learning about the wrong diagnosis has not led to her being healed and has been a “mindf**k” Applegate said. She sadly marveled at how she had lived with something for years, believing all the while that doctors knew what it was.
“I haven’t gotten better, Jamie! If anything, I’ve gotten worse. So I’m back at square one where I don’t know what’s going on with me,” she said. “And that’s going to be an online investigation that my doctors are going to be getting into just to find out what has been going on since 2021, why did this happen?”
She also spoke about her depression and how she has “lost everything” including her job.
“I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor’s office. I can’t walk from the car to the room. I’m still in this,” Applegate said. “Nothing magical happened when she said, ‘You don’t have MS.’”
The star’s doctors are continuing to try and determine what is causing her symptoms.
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