Emmy-award-winning actress Christina Applegate said that she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis after more than five years of believing she had the disorder.
Applegate, 54, revealed the news on her podcast, "MeSsy," on Tuesday, where she and her co-host, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, regularly discuss living with the chronic condition.
Applegate was originally diagnosed with MS in 2021 and became an advocate for the disease. In the podcast, she said her doctor wanted to take her off her infusion treatments a few years ago to see how her B cells reacted.
There were no changes after the treatment stopped, so, according to Applegate, her doctor began investigating her original diagnosis and came to the conclusion she never had MS.
"She came into my room and said, 'Congratulations, you don't have MS,' " Applegate said on her podcast. "I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy."
Applegate said she had taken a break from the podcast before Tuesday to process the new information and now feels that she is "back at square one" because her symptoms remain.
According to the National MS Society, multiple sclerosis is "an unpredictable disease of the central nervous system." It can disrupt the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and the rest of the body, and symptoms really vary from person to person.
There are no known causes and several different types of the disease.
