Christina Applegate said doctors have now told her she does not have multiple sclerosis after all, a reversal she described on Tuesday as she spoke on the podcast she hosts with Jamie Lynn Sigler. A doctor came into her room and told her, “Congratulations, you don't have MS,” after recent testing using new technology led to that conclusion.
For a performer who had spent years publicly tied to the disease, the news landed as a shock more than a relief. Applegate said, “I was like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy,” and added, “This may come as good news … but I'm back at square one.”
That reaction matters because Applegate had been one of the most visible advocates for living with multiple sclerosis since 2021, turning her own health struggle into a public conversation. She had said the diagnosis explained tingling and numbness in her extremities, lack of coordination, balance problems and difficulty walking, and she had built much of her recent public life around the illness.
The reversal also reaches back through a difficult stretch in her career and health. Earlier this year, Applegate told People she had been spending most of her time in bed because she was so ill, and her health had deteriorated to the point that she left Dead to Me, which ended with a third season in November 2022. She also wrote You With the Sad Eyes about the condition, and she and Jamie Lynn Sigler said they had become “the poster children for MS.”
The new result does not answer the larger question of what has been driving her symptoms. MS is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body's own healthy cells and affects the nervous system, but Applegate said the latest news still left her without an explanation for why she had been so sick. That is the hard edge of the story: a diagnosis can disappear even when the illness does not.
During the podcast episode, Dr. Marwa Kaisey spoke about the risk of misdiagnosis and the pressure around getting answers fast. She said some people had gone on for years with an MS misdiagnosis and that many had been prescribed medication to treat it, even though nearly 1 in 5 patients in one study did not fully meet the criteria for the disease. Kaisey described that as the push and pull of the diagnostic process: doctors want to treat early, but they also have to get the diagnosis right.
For Applegate, the immediate story is no longer whether she has MS. It is what doctors will call the illness that has kept her in bed, changed her work and reshaped the way she talks about her body. Until that answer comes, she remains back at square one.
