Christina Applegate says her MS diagnosis was a misdiagnosis, but the news has brought little relief. More than five years after revealing she had multiple sclerosis, the 54-year-old actor said doctors have now ruled it out while her disabling symptoms continue to worsen.
Speaking on the October 20 episode of MeSsy, the podcast she hosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Applegate recalled a doctor entering her room and saying, “Congratulations, you don’t have MS.” Everyone else appeared pleased. Applegate was not.
“This may come as great news, but to me it comes as, like, I’m back at square one,” she said.
Her symptoms have not gone away
The change in diagnosis has not changed Applegate’s physical condition. The Dead to Me and Married... with Children star still regularly uses a walking cane and experiences widespread pain, fatigue and problems with her legs.
“I haven’t gotten better, Jamie,” she said. “If anything, I’ve gotten worse.”
Applegate said her doctors will now investigate what has caused her symptoms since 2021. She added that she experiences “every symptom of someone with MS,” while acknowledging that several other conditions can closely resemble the disease.
The uncertainty has also affected her mental health. Applegate described sleeping through the previous day, feeling unwell because of the heat and struggling to use her legs. Despite those continuing problems, losing the diagnosis has created an unwelcome doubt in her mind.
“And yet I have this thing of like, ‘Well, you don’t have that, so maybe you’re faking it,’” she said.
A medical label is hardly anyone’s preferred possession, but it can at least explain what is happening. Applegate said the diagnosis had given her a framework for managing her health and a community in which she felt understood.
Applegate says she feels she let people down
The actor said she had relied on friends and others living with multiple sclerosis after receiving her original diagnosis. Alongside Sigler, she became a prominent public voice for people with the condition.
“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” Applegate said. “You and I became the poster children for MS.”
She explained that the diagnosis had given her a reason for her daily pain and limitations. Without it, she feels unsettled and confused, even though the symptoms themselves remain very real.
Sigler, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2002 at age 20 while working on The Sopranos, told her co-host that the new information did not erase the support she had offered others.
“You didn’t mislead anyone,” Sigler said, adding that Applegate’s previous advocacy and openness still mattered.
Sigler also noted that misdiagnosis is not unusual in cases involving multiple sclerosis. A 2019 study led by Cedars-Sinai found that nearly one in five patients referred with an established MS diagnosis had been incorrectly diagnosed.
For now, Applegate has no replacement diagnosis. She remains in pain, her mobility problems continue, and her doctors are searching for another explanation. The congratulatory part, understandably, may have been premature.
