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Well, actress Christina Applegate is sharing a puzzling personal health update. On her podcast called Messy with actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, she revealed that she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Yeah, she says after believing she was living with the disease, hearing the news was a shock. She came into my room and [snorts] she said, um, "Congratulations, you don't have MS." Well, I was like not happy at all. Yeah, you know, not everybody else was so happy. Applegate says the revelation came thanks to new technology, but said she's frustrated feeling like she is back at square one not knowing what's causing
all of her symptoms now. Yeah, turns out an MS misdiagnosis is not uncommon. Doctors say about one in five are wrong because there's no definitive test for the disease. Yeah, CBS LA's Jeff Nguyen speaking with a doctor and a young woman who took years to get a diagnosis after the frustration and the hope that better science is coming. I had optic neuritis, which we now know is a very common first sign of MS especially in young women. 35-year-old Sunny Conway has dealt with vision problems, vertigo, and numbness in her lower body for years, but doctors could not diagnose her with multiple
sclerosis. It was so hard to diagnose me because for so long, not just the greater public, but also medical professionals thought, "Well, you're too young or you're too this and you're too active." This is a picture of Conway on her wedding day in 2018 being walked down the aisle by her brother months before she was diagnosed with MS. And I remember saying to him, "Please don't let me fall because I can't feel my feet." She's been getting infusions every 6 months because MS is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.
Is there a definitive way to test for MS? There is not one definitive uh diagnostic test. Dr. Bruce Beebo is the chief medical and public affairs officer for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which provided us with this video of the work that's being done to manage the disease. He says doctors will look at a patient's uh symptoms through neurological exams, magnetic resonance imaging, and sometimes take a spinal fluid or blood samples. One of the challenges we have is that um the symptoms associated with MS can occur in other conditions, too. Dr. Beebo says refined MS diagnostic criteria were published last year. He's optimistic new MRI technology and new biomarkers will open the door for
earlier and more accurate diagnosis by educating the healthcare community. A lot times MS is caught at your ophthalmologist or optometrist office cuz visual signs and symptoms are pretty common early signs. I'm heartbroken for her. Conway is speaking out after film and TV star Christina Applegate announced she was misdiagnosed with MS. Everything that we can learn, whether it's in favor of or against diagnosing, is still data. And that's the one thing we're always going to need more of.
She's hoping the headlines will lead to refinements in science so that patients battle their symptoms instead of getting the wrong diagnosis. In Irvine, Jeff Nguyen, CBS LA.
