Christina Applegate says she was misdiagnosed with MS

Christina Applegate believed for the last five years the problems with her body were connected to multiple sclerosis. Turns out that was a misdiagnosis. The actress now has no explanation for what is going on. Marianne looking at what has to be, I mean, a crushing revolution. She uses a cane, a wheelchair a lot of the time. She's been very open about her health struggles. And then when the diagnosis came in 2021, she became an advocate for people who have multiple sclerosis and now she's left what she describes as back to square one she has no idea why she's been experiencing the numbness she's been experiencing the pain she's been experiencing all symptoms she thought were MS and she talked about receiving this news about this misdiagnosis on her podcast called Messy which she co-hosts with actress Jamie Lynn Sigler who also has MS it's hard to say that she came into my room and she said um congratulations you don't have MS this may come as great news but to me it comes as like very like i'm back at square one so what happens next she has to undergo presumably more testing to figure out exactly why she's been having the symptoms she's been having this is something that many people may relate to uh you know but the fact that she's so high profile and has been very vocal about her diagnosis was what makes this a really interesting one. When you look at the symptoms, though, of MS, they can be quite vague. It is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. Her symptoms, she has been very open about. Numbness in her feet that traveled up her legs. Pain that persisted, and that led to what she described as testing under the sun. And now it seems testing may be in her future again to figure out exactly what's been causing this. Because there is no test for MS. There's not a single, you have it, you don't. And that speaks to the challenges of trying to diagnose it. Yes, and it is quite a common diagnosis. More than 3 million people around the world have MS. But you're right, there is no one test to say you have it or you don't have it. You have to undergo a lot of testing. That includes, in some cases, a spinal tap, MRIs for your brain and for your spine. It is extensive and they're ruling things out, which is why diagnosing it is difficult and a misdiagnosis can also happen. And I know, David, you spoke to Dr. Gupta this morning and he speaks to just how complex this can be. Because of that complexity, certain studies suggest that 10, even up to 20% of people who have this diagnosis, when they go to a specialized center, are told, you know, we actually don't think you have MS. It's also evolving. We've had new guidelines for the diagnosis of MS as of last year that put an emphasis on a different finding on MRI, one that she apparently didn't have. So this just tells you that it's not just a diagnosis that is complex in itself, but it's one that's evolving over time as we learn more. That may be promising for those who are going through this right now. But in Canada, important to note that it has the highest rate of multiple sclerosis diagnoses in the entire world. One in 400 people are diagnosed with this disease and majority of them are women. So the fact that she's been an advocate for this disease has certainly gotten people talking, maybe made people feel less alone. But now the conversation has shifted to who's experienced a misdiagnosis. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Marianne, thank you very much. You're welcome. I don't know.