Christina Applegate Reveals Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis

Christina Applegate shocked her fans late Monday by revealing that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a few months ago. "It's been a strange journey," she tweeted.

In the time since her diagnosis, she shared that she has "been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition." In a brief series of tweets, she also admitted that "it's been a tough road."

In a follow-up tweet, the actress shared a piece of advice she'd received from a friend of hers who also has MS. "We wake up and take the indicated action," she quoted. "And that's what I do."

She then asked for privacy "as I go through this thing." MS is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system. It can impact the flow of information from the brain to the body -- though it manifests differently in different patients -- and is incurable.

Applegate, who first rose to fame as a teenager on "Married...with Children," was previously open about another health crisis when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008.

She opted for a double mastectomy, working that choice into the narrative of her Netflix series, "Dead to Me."

There have been other celebrities who have shared their own journey with MS, including Jack Osbourne, Jamie Lynn Sigler and Selma Blair. Applegate and Blair co-starred in the 2002 film "The Sweetest Thing" with Cameron Diaz.

Blair has been very public with her own experiences with MS, opening up about falling, dropping things and sometimes struggling to organize her thoughts. She first shared her diagnosis in 2018, saying that she'd probably had it for 15 years or more but it took this long to get a diagnosis.