After becoming a prominent advocate for multiple sclerosis awareness and chronicling her struggles in an emotional memoir published in March, the Emmy-winning actor Christina Applegate has revealed she does not have the debilitating autoimmune disease after all.
Applegate, 54, made the stunning announcement in an episode of her podcast MeSsy, recorded with fellow actor Jamie-Lynn Sigler, posted to YouTube on Tuesday.
“I’m back at square one – that I don’t know what’s going on with me,” she said through tears.
Applegate recalled the moment she found out about the misdiagnosis in a visit to her doctor.
“She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations – you don’t have MS.’ I was not happy at all.
“You don’t get misdiagnosed, and all of a sudden I’m better. I haven’t gotten better, Jamie. If anything, I’ve gotten worse in some ways.
“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. Nothing magical happened when she said, ‘You don’t have MS.’ Nothing magical happened.
“It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down. It’s this weird feeling of like I became this, you and I, the poster children for MS. All that I did, everything that I was doing, I had a fucking reason as to why my day sucked every day.
“And now I don’t have a reason. It’s very unnerving and it’s really confusing for me.”
Applegate had revealed in 2021 that she was diagnosed with MS. In an interview with People magazine promoting her memoir, titled You With the Sad Eyes, she said was largely confined to bed because of her diagnosed condition.
She is known for her roles in the TV series Married … with Children and Dead to Me – as well as the films Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
Applegate also worked on the TV show Friends and won a 2002 Emmy for outstanding guest acting in a comedy series.
She retired from acting two years after the 2021 MS diagnosis, when she wrapped up her role on Dead to Me.
Applegate had also stepped back over the last six months from the podcast with Sigler, who revealed in 2016 her own diagnosis of relapsing MS (RMS).
During that period, Applegate said in Tuesday’s episode, “a lot of interesting things happened to me.”
She recalled originally receiving her diagnosis in 2021 when a doctor showed her images of dozens of lesions on her brain and confirmed she had MS. “That was it right? That was my answer to everything going on,” she said, saying she began to feel safe and welcome in the MS community as her treatment moved on.
“I had every symptom of someone with MS. Every single one.”
She said a study into her diagnosis began “a couple of years ago” after cell testing produced curious results. Now, she knows she does not have the disease, she said: “That’s going to be an online investigation my doctors are going to get into just to find out what has been happening since 2021. Why did this happen?”
Later in the episode, Sigler and Applegate discuss what they say is a trend of misdiagnoses.
“We have come to learn this is not that rare of an occurrence, especially when it comes to MS,” Sigler said.
Applegate added: “There’s a pretty damn high number of misdiagnoses with MS, and that’s after people have been going through the process of it, with the infusions, for many years.
“It’s clear now they’re finding something different, that something else is going on.”
Applegate said learning she doesn’t have the disease was challenging mentally.
“I’m sure people are saying like, ‘crybaby, you don’t have MS, you know, that’s a good thing’ – but no, no, no,” she said.
“I’m sitting here having slept all day yesterday, feeling like absolute crap because of the heat. My legs aren’t working. You know, all the same stuff is happening to me, and yet I have this thing of like, well, you don’t have that, so maybe you’re faking it.
“In my head I’m like what can I be doing differently? This is what I’m sure a lot of people start thinking when they get their misdiagnoses. It’s like, ‘well, what have I done wrong? What am I doing?’”
Sigler told Applegate that she never let anybody down.
“Everything you did, and shared, and were, and are, to so many people doesn’t go anywhere,” she said.
“Because of this misdiagnosis or this new information that you have in your life, that doesn’t take away anything that you did. You didn’t mislead anyone. In no way should you feel bad or uneasy about your continuing to share your journey with people.”
A 2024 Swiss-led study, published in the Multiple Sclerosis Journal, found “high-level evidence for high proportions of misdiagnosis and underdiagnoses of MS” – including a 15% misdiagnosis rate in cases it looked at.
