Christina Applegate Says She Was Misdiagnosed With MS
Christina Applegate told listeners of her podcast this week that her doctor now says she does not have multiple sclerosis. She also said she still doesn't know what is making her sick.
"I'm back at square one where I don't know what's going on with me," the actor said on "MeSsy," the show she co-hosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, according to The Associated Press. Applegate, 54, first announced her MS diagnosis in 2021. Her symptoms have not changed. She said she still has every symptom of someone with MS and uses a wheelchair at the doctor's office because she can't walk from the car to the exam room.
She described a second weight on top of the medical uncertainty. She and Sigler have become prominent voices for people with MS, and Applegate said she feels she has let people down. She called the news unnerving and confusing.
Sigler, 45, who has lived with MS since she was 20 and went public in 2016, told her to give herself grace and said the MS community would stay by her side while she looks for answers, Parade reported. Parade also reported that Applegate said she stayed off the podcast for seven months after the doctor told her she did not have the disease.
Dr. Marwa Kaisey, an associate professor of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, joined the episode to explain how this happens. There is no single test for MS, she said, and a diagnosis usually involves ruling out other causes. She called misdiagnosis fairly common and put it at about 20 percent: almost one in five people who had been told they had MS, some for decades, did not have it, and most of them were taking medication for it, according to Parade.
Applegate has written about the disease in her memoir, "You with the Sad Eyes," published this year, describing unpredictable symptoms and a life that has shrunk to the size of her bed, per the AP. Her name drew more than 200,000 searches on Google in the past 24 hours, according to Google Trends.
The episode does not say what the doctor believes she has. Applegate and Sigler said the podcast will continue, with doctors and other guests.
