This week, Christina Applegate shared a stunning health revelation: She doesn’t have multiple sclerosis (MS) after all.
As USA Today reports, the “Married With Children” and “Dead to Me” star, 54, revealed the news in the latest episode of her “MeSsY” podcast, a show she hosts with Jamie-Lynn Sigler (who has also been living with the autoimmune disease) that is focused on living with MS.
Applegate had previously shared in 2021 that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease. But on her new podcast episode, she said this was a misdiagnosis. Applegate broke down in tears as she recounted how her doctor recently told her, “Congratulations, you don’t have MS.” She continued, “This may come as great news, but to me, it comes as I’m back at square one.”
Applegate said that while everyone in her life was relieved, her reaction to the news was that she was “not happy at all,” noting, “You don’t get misdiagnosed and then all of a sudden I’m better. I haven’t gotten better, Jamie. If anything, I’ve gotten worse in some ways. So I’m back at square one, that I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
Christina Applegate had ‘every symptom’ of MS before Misdiagnosis
The star explained that her doctors will have to continue investigating what has been happening with her because she had “every symptom of someone with MS,” including weakness, pain, and difficulty walking. For someone like Applegate, who is a trained dancer, it was especially devastating.
Applegate has said her first MS symptom was numbness in her toes, which extended to her legs. On her Oct. 20 podcast, she told listeners it “hurts to stand up” and that her current symptoms include fatigue, noting she is “sleeping all the time.” Said Applegate, “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.”
Applegate also got vulnerable on the podcast about feeling like she has “let everybody down” in that she and Sigler had become “poster children for MS.” Sigler, though, assured her that she did nothing wrong and “didn’t mislead anyone.”
The update comes after Applegate spent several months in the hospital earlier this year. She had stepped away from her “MeSsY” podcast, but returned on Oct. 20 with a two-part episode sharing her health news. In the second part, Applegate and Sigler spoke with a neurologist, Marwa Kaisey, who said it’s “fairly common” for multiple sclerosis to be misdiagnosed because “we don’t have one, single test for MS” and the symptoms are “very common in other things that are not MS.”
Kaisey told Applegate she conducted a study looking at new MS patients, which found that “almost one in five of these people who’d been told they had MS, some for decades, didn’t actually have it.” Multiple sclerosis is a disease where the “immune system attacks the protective sheath that covers nerve fibers, known as myelin,” which “interrupts communication between the brain and the rest of the body,” according to the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms can include numbness or tingling, difficulty walking and fatigue.
Christina Applegate MS diagnosis: Star shared health update in 2021
Applegate originally announced her MS diagnosis in August 2021, telling followers on X that it has “been a strange journey,” but she has felt “so supported by people that I know who also have this condition.”
Since 2021, Applegate has candidly documented her health journey on her “MeSsy” podcast and elsewhere. In a 2025 podcast episode, she said she has “been in the hospital upwards of 30 times,” visits that stemmed from “throwing up and diarrhea and pain.” She also shared on “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” that she doesn’t “really leave the house anymore.”
The “Anchorman” actress published her memoir “You with the Sad Eyes,” in which she discussed her health journey and 2021 MS diagnosis, in March.
In her new podcast, Applegate said she was still in a “state of shock” since hearing the news, but will soon “start the investigation” into the true reason for her health issues. “How many specialists am I going to have to find for something I don’t even know what I’m looking for?” she asked. “So that process is going to start, but I needed some time.”
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