Five years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, actor Christina Applegate revealed this week that she had been misdiagnosed. Her experience puts a public face on one of the most consequential challenges in neurology: how to diagnose a complex disease early enough to prevent irreversible damage without sacrificing accuracy.
How MS is diagnosed has changed dramatically during my nearly four decades in the field. When I began my career, physicians often had to wait for symptoms to recur before they could confirm MS. Today, advances in imaging, biomarkers, and diagnostic criteria are helping us recognize the disease earlier, when treatment may have the greatest opportunity to prevent irreversible neurological damage.