Christina Applegate says 2021 MS diagnosis was wrong

Christina Applegate said in MeSsy podcast episodes published Oct. 20 that her 2021 multiple sclerosis diagnosis was wrong, while a neurologist said nearly 1 in 5 MS diagnoses involve people who do not have it.

The disclosure matters because Applegate and co-host Jamie Lynn Sigler built MeSsy around living with MS; in the Oct. 20 episodes, Dr. Marwa Kaisey compared MS with conditions confirmed by one simple test and said diagnosis instead relies on criteria.

Applegate, known for Married With Children and Dead to Me, said her doctor delivered the new assessment after further testing. “She came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS.’ I was, like, not happy at all.

Everybody else was so happy.”

The actor said the result did not resolve the symptoms that had shaped her work and public life since the earlier diagnosis. “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of the sudden I’m better,” Applegate said. “I haven’t gotten better, Jamie!

If anything, I’ve gotten worse.”

Applegate said she now lacked an explanation for the illness she had been describing as MS. “So I’m back at square one where I don’t know what’s going on with me,” she said, adding that her doctors would investigate what had happened since 2021.

Kaisey, an associate professor in the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center department of neurology, joined the second episode and described MS misdiagnosis as “fairly common.” She said MS is not confirmed by one definitive test, but by diagnostic criteria.

“We don’t have one single test for MS,” Kaisey said. “It’s not like we have something like a pregnancy test that says, ‘Yes. You have it.’

‘No. You don’t.’ It’s a list of criteria.”

Kaisey said nearly 1 in 5 people diagnosed with MS do not actually have it, and that most of them had received MS medication. The comparison she drew was direct: unlike a pregnancy test, MS diagnosis depends on a list of criteria rather than one binary result.

The Mayo Clinic describes multiple sclerosis as a chronic, immune-mediated disorder of the central nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord, that can cause muscle weakness, vision changes, numbness, memory loss and gastrointestinal problems.

For Applegate, the update complicates a public identity formed around disability advocacy and illness. She said she had experienced “a great depression” and that her life and work had been altered, including reliance on wheelchairs at medical visits.

Applegate also questioned what the new finding meant for the advocacy role she and Sigler had occupied. “It’s weird because I feel like I let everybody down,” she said. “It’s this weird feeling because I became this — you and I, the poster children for MS.”

Deadline reported that Applegate had been hospitalized in March for treatment and testing, and that Tuesday’s episodes marked her first return to MeSsy since then. The podcast resumed April 21 with Sigler and guest hosts.

Applegate said MeSsy would continue, describing her health journey as “the same game with a different name.” No new diagnosis was reported in the episode.

Source: trade-press article, Deadline, Oct. 20, 2026