Christina Applegates next steps after multiple…
Christina Applegate says she’s “back at square one” after more than 5 years of believing she had multiple sclerosis (MS) — only for a doctor to inform her she doesn’t.
“‘Congratulations. You don’t have MS,’ ” the “Dead to Me” actress, 54, recalled her doctor saying. Yet she was “not happy at all” about the revelation.
“I’m back at square one, that I don’t know what’s going on with me,” she said Tuesday on her podcast, “MeSsy,” which she hosts with fellow actor Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who was identified with MS in 2001.
MS causes the immune system to assault the protecting masking on nerve fibers, disrupting communication between the mind and the remaining of the physique. That disruption might turn into everlasting, and sufferers can lose the flexibility to stroll on their own or transfer at all.
Misdiagnosis impacts more people than you would possibly suppose.
Christina Applegate speaks on stage with a cane at the 2024 Emmy Awards. WireImage
“Up to 1 in 5 patients diagnosed with MS may not actually have MS but a different condition,” Dr. Elena Grebenciucova, an MS and neuroimmunology doctor at Northwestern Medicine, told The Post. “Symptoms of MS are not unique to MS.”
A misdiagnosis doesn’t just confuse and misery sufferers. Shortly after being identified with MS, sufferers often start therapies that suppress the immune system to slow long-term incapacity development.
Improper treatment could cause extreme injury and pointless health dangers.
“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.”
Here’s how an MS misdiagnosis can happen — and the next steps Applegate is taking to determine the right trigger of her health woes.
What are Applegate’s symptoms?
Applegate reported first experiencing a tingling sensation in her toes in early 2021 that regularly led to “insane tingling” from her “butt down.”
She also felt her leg buckling while taking pictures scenes for Netflix’s “Dead to Me.”
She required a wheelchair during the 2021 filming and has walked with a cane since.
“My knees feel like I have bricks attached to them, heavy and painful,” Applegate famous as she mirrored on her symptoms. “When I put my feet down on the ground when I wake up, it feels as if the floor is made of needles, yet I can’t feel them because my feet are completely numb.”
She detailed other struggles in her 2026 memoir, “You With the Sad Eyes.”
“When I wake up, I often can’t get my arm to move far enough to grab the cup of water by my bed or my phone from its charger,” she wrote.
“My stomach frequently slows to a halt, leaving me to regularly rush to the emergency room in agony.”
What are the symptoms of MS?
MS, which is believed to have an effect on almost 1 million Americans, would possibly start with imaginative and prescient issues (such as double imaginative and prescient, pain with eye motion or imaginative and prescient loss), muscle weak spot (often in the arms and legs), muscle stiffness and muscle spasms. This can lead to clumsiness and issue balancing.
It might also manifest as tingling, numbness or pain in the limbs, stomach or face; loss of bladder control; and/or dizziness. There can also be cognitive and emotional modifications: issues concentrating and issue with emotional expression and control.
Applegate was identified with MS in 2021. Getty Images for Critics Choice Association
Over time, muscle weak spot and pain can have an effect on strolling or standing or lead to paralysis.
About 20% to 40% of MS circumstances progress steadily, with some durations when the disease doesn’t worsen.
Most people have relapse-remitting MS, where new symptoms or “relapses” emerge over days or weeks, then improve or disappear fully.
What steps is Applegate taking to get the right diagnosis?
Anyone who believes they could have been misdiagnosed with MS ought to go to an MS specialist.
“It’s important to talk to a neuro-immunologist at an academic center to review whether this is autoimmune and what other mimics of MS may have not been investigated,” Grebenciucova said.
Applegate said on her Tuesday podcast episode that her medical doctors are embarking on “an online investigation … to find out what has been going on since 2021, why did this happen?”
Dr. Marwa Kaisey, an affiliate professor of neurology at Cedars-Sinai in LA, said on the podcast that it’s crucial to discover the trigger of Applegate’s inflammation.
“The next steps are to try to get them an answer as to what’s actually going on, and that looks different in each patient,” Kaisey explained.
“For someone like Christina, who has these bands in her spinal fluid [the diagnostic hallmark that was the basis for her MS diagnosis], there’s probably something causing inflammation within her central nervous system, so that’s the road that you might go down and look for things that might be inflammatory causes.”
Rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune condition, is being explored, Applegate said on the podcast. Her rep had no additional remark to The Post.
Which circumstances are often mistaken for MS?
Many illnesses manifest symptoms comparable to MS, that are called “MS mimics.”
“For example, tingling or blurry vision can occur due to dozens of other diagnoses. Imbalance, likewise, can occur due to a variety of conditions,” Grebenciucova said.
Applegate said her medical doctors reevaluated her MS diagnosis and decided she didn’t have it. Getty Images
Because there may be no single check that can determine MS, sometimes the only approach to determine it’s to rule out other prospects.
This consists of autoimmune problems like acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren’s syndrome, myasthenia gravis (MG) and sarcoidosis.
Lyme disease, human T-cell lymphotropic virus-1 (HTLV-1) and syphilis that spreads to the mind are a few infectious illnesses that can appear like MS. Stroke, ALS, muscular dystrophy, hypothyroidism, hypertension and many other mimics add to the chaos.
To make issues even more difficult, MS appears to be like very different between people and can even differ in the same individual over time.
Because beginning medication for MS early makes such a big distinction — if the affected person truly has it — stress to rapidly set up a diagnosis might also increase misdiagnoses.
What are crimson flags of misdiagnosis?
When sufferers show options outdoors a typical MS case (called “red flags”), a new diagnosis isn’t always made.
Experts say this could also be because many MS medical doctors often encounter uncommon MS circumstances and contemplate them a half of the spectrum of the disease.
Plus, when sufferers switch or get referred to a new doctor, that supplier might just settle for the earlier diagnosis without query. Also, medical doctors are human too: they might not need to admit they’re incorrect.
According to the National MS Society, bilateral imaginative and prescient loss, seizures, headache, abrupt onset of symptoms and hiccups lasting more than a month are some of the crimson flags that might point out an MS diagnosis is definitely one thing else.
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