Christina Applegate said she has gone through 'a great depression' since learning she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, adding: 'I lost everything.' The actress, 54, spoke on the 3 November episode of 'MeSsy', her podcast with Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

Applegate was diagnosed with MS in 2021. In October, she revealed that further testing led her doctors to conclude that she does not have the disease, although her debilitating symptoms have continued.

Applegate said she had been 'living with this for six years' and that it 'stopped my life'. Guest Jack Osbourne joined the discussion about navigating the chronic autoimmune disease.

Symptoms Persist Without the Diagnosis

Applegate recalled her doctor telling her: 'Congratulations, you don't have MS.' 'I was, like, not happy at all,' she said. 'Everybody else was so happy.'

'I still have to use wheelchairs when I go to the doctor's office. I can't walk from the car to the room,' she said. 'Nothing magical happened.'

Her original diagnosis had explained tingling and numbness in her extremities, lack of coordination, balance issues and difficulty walking. Without it, she said, she is 'back at square one'.

'I haven't gotten better,' Applegate said. 'If anything, I've gotten worse.' She said her doctors are now investigating what has caused her symptoms since 2021.

Applegate said doctors are going 'one-by-one' through the 'sister diseases' to MS, noting that rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Lyme disease 'can kind of mimic MS'. 'So now I'm being tested for all that stuff slowly but surely,' she said.

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Grief and a Shifting Identity

The diagnosis had once given Applegate a reason for her difficult days. 'And now I don't have a reason and it's very unnerving and it's very confusing for me,' she said.

She is also struggling to find her place in the MS community, saying she feels she 'let everybody down' after she and Sigler became 'the poster children for MS'.

Applegate was diagnosed while filming the final season of Netflix's 'Dead to Me'. Production paused for five months before she returned to complete the series, which premiered in November 2022. She said on the podcast that she had lost her job.

What Research Says About Depression

The National MS Society says depression is one of the most common symptoms of MS. It is equally common in other immune-mediated diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, which suggests inflammation contributes to depression in these conditions.

Johns Hopkins Medicine says depression can occur in up to 50 per cent of people with MS and is three times more common than in the general population. It is frequently underdiagnosed and undertreated in people with the disease.

Why MS Misdiagnosis Happens

Dr Marwa Kaisey, an associate professor in the neurology department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said on the podcast that MS misdiagnoses are 'fairly common'. She noted there is no single test for the disease.

'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,' she said. She co-authored a study titled 'Incidence of multiple sclerosis misdiagnosis in referrals to two academic centers'.

The study found nearly one in five patients with an MS diagnosis did not fully meet the criteria for the disease. Those patients 'had a much more likely alternate diagnosis'.

Kaisey said some people had lived with the wrong diagnosis for decades, and that most of them were taking medication to treat MS. She described a 'push and pull' in the diagnostic process.

Doctors are eager to start treatment early because it leads to better outcomes, she said. 'But at the same time we have to be really careful to give them the accurate diagnosis.'

Applegate's doctors are still working to determine what is causing her symptoms. Testing continues.

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