Christina Applegate says doctors told her she never had MS, five years after diagnosis

Christina Applegate says she does not have multiple sclerosis, the disease she has lived with, advocated for and built a public identity around since 2021.

The 54-year-old actress made the announcement Tuesday, Oct. 20, in a two-part episode of her podcast "MeSsy," which she co-hosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler. Sigler was diagnosed with MS roughly 25 years ago.

The doctor's news

Applegate said her neurologist walked into the room and told her: "Congratulations, you don't have MS."

"I was, like, not happy at all," Applegate said. "Everybody else was so happy."

She explained that the diagnosis came into question a few years ago, when her doctor wanted to take her off an infusion treatment and watch how her B cells responded. Her cell count neither rose nor fell after the treatment stopped. That began what Applegate called "kind of a study into my diagnosis."

When she was first diagnosed, she said, she had a spinal tap and MRIs, and the scans showed lesions on her brain.

Still sick, still without an answer

The news did not come with relief, because the symptoms did not change.

"You don't get misdiagnosed and then all of a sudden I'm better," Applegate said. "I haven't gotten better, Jamie! If anything, I've gotten worse in some ways."

She said she still uses a wheelchair at the doctor's office and cannot walk from the car to the exam room. She also said she had "every symptom of someone with MS." She does physical therapy three times a week.

Applegate said her doctors will now try to work out what is actually wrong and why she was diagnosed with MS in the first place. By her account, that investigation begins next week. "Something else is going on," she said.

Five years of public life as an MS patient

Applegate announced the diagnosis in 2021. She wrapped her Netflix series "Dead to Me" and stepped back from acting. In a 2022 New York Times interview she said she could not walk without a cane, and that she used a wheelchair while filming the show, whose script was adjusted to accommodate her symptoms.

She received a standing ovation at the 2024 Emmy Awards, appearing on stage with a cane. This March she published a memoir, "You With the Sad Eyes." Around that time she told ABC News' Robin Roberts she had not yet accepted her diagnosis, adding, "This is a lifelong disease with no cure. Period."

She also spent months in the hospital earlier this year, and recently took a break from the podcast. She said Tuesday she used that time to process the new information.

She described a strange kind of loss. "I became this, you and I, the poster children for MS," she told Sigler. "I had a reason as to why my day sucked every day. And now I don't have a reason, and it's very unnerving, and it's really confusing for me." She said she felt she had "let everybody down."

She also spoke about the toll on her life. "I've gone through a great depression because of it," she said through tears. "I lost my job."

How common is this?

Applegate said misdiagnosis of MS is not rare, calling the number "pretty damn high."

Dr. Marwa Kaisey, an associate professor in the neurology department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said on the podcast that almost one in five people who have been told they have MS "didn't actually have it." Misdiagnosis is "fairly common," Kaisey said, because there is no single test for the disease.

That fits how the condition is diagnosed. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, diagnosis rests on a combination of neurological exams, MRI scans and lab testing. Symptoms vary widely from person to person and can be unpredictable, which is part of why other conditions can mimic the disease.

A diagnostic system that relies on pattern recognition rather than one definitive test will produce errors. For a patient, the cost of one can run to years of treatment for the wrong condition. Applegate's case suggests another cost: years of a public identity and advocacy platform built on that diagnosis.

What comes next

Applegate has not said what her doctors now think is causing her symptoms. She has not said what treatment she received for MS, beyond the infusion therapy her doctor paused, or whether that treatment contributed to her condition. She has also not named the physician who revised the diagnosis.

The open question is the one she put to her co-host: what has been happening to her body since 2021. Her doctors are expected to begin the search for that answer next week.