Christina Applegate Says She Was Misdiagnosed With Multiple Sclerosis

Actress Christina Applegate says doctors recently determined that she had been misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the neurological autoimmune disease.

Applegate, 54, disclosed the news Tuesday on “MeSsY,” the MS-focused podcast she co-hosts with actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who has openly discussed her own experience with the disease.

“This may come as great news, but to me, it comes as like, very like I’m back at square one,” Applegate said. She recalled her doctor entering the room and telling her, “Congratulations, you don’t have MS.”

Applegate publicly revealed in 2021 that she had been diagnosed with MS. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the condition causes the immune system to attack cells in the central nervous system.

As recently as March, Applegate told ABC News’ Robin Roberts that she was still struggling to accept the diagnosis. “This is a lifelong disease with no cure. Period,” she said at the time.

On the podcast, she said she continues to experience “every symptom of someone with MS.” Learning that the diagnosis may have been wrong, she added, has raised more questions than it answered.

“If anything, I’ve gotten worse in some ways, and so I’m back at square one that I don’t know what’s going on with me,” Applegate said. She explained that her doctors will conduct an extensive review to determine what has happened since 2021 and why the original diagnosis was made.

“It’s very unnerving and it’s really confusing for me,” she later said.

No single test can currently confirm an MS diagnosis. Doctors instead rely on a broad assessment that may involve neurological examinations, MRI scans and laboratory tests. Symptoms can be unpredictable and may include fatigue, numbness or tingling, weakness, bladder-control problems, dizziness and vertigo.

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MS also has no known cure. Treatment typically involves medication intended to reduce flare-ups and slow the progression of disability.

Applegate said she stepped away from the “MeSsy” podcast to process the misdiagnosis, which she described as sending her into a “great depression.”

“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,” she said. “Nothing magical happened when [the doctor] said, ‘You don’t have MS.’ Nothing magical happened.”

Applegate’s last major acting role was in Netflix’s “Dead to Me,” which ended in 2022. She said the change in her diagnosis has also left her feeling disconnected from the community she believed she belonged to.

“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” Applegate said. She described herself and Sigler as “the poster children for MS” and said the diagnosis had given purpose to much of her advocacy and public work. “And now I don’t have a reason and it’s very unnerving and it’s very confusing for me.”

In a subsequent episode, Applegate and Sigler spoke with Dr. Marwa Kaisey, an associate professor of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Kaisey said Applegate’s experience is not unusual among people evaluated for MS.

Kaisey said her research found that nearly one in five people diagnosed with MS are misdiagnosed. She linked the high rate to the absence of a definitive diagnostic test and the fact that many MS symptoms are “very common in other things that are not MS.”