Monica Seles, who won nine Grand Slam titles in the 1990s, has been battling a neuromuscular autoimmune disease for three years, the course of which is difficult to predict.

The former queen of women's tennis in the 1990s with 53 titles, including nine Grand Slams, revealed to The Associated Press on Tuesday that she has been battling myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular autoimmune disease, for three years. She wanted to reveal the existence of the disease before the US Open to draw public attention to its impact on health and medical research.

The first symptoms appeared while she was playing tennis with children or relatives. "I was missing balls. I thought, 'I see two balls. Obviously there are symptoms that you can't ignore.'" And that's when my search began. It took me a long time to accept it, to start speaking in public, because it’s hard.” “It torments me every day,” explains the tennis player from the former Yugoslavia, who became a US citizen in 1994.

At 51 and having retired from tennis in 2003, Seles regularly suffers from symptoms affecting her vision as well as the muscles in her arms and legs. “It’s already very difficult for me to blow-dry my hair,” she admitted.

“Myasthenia gravis, a chronic autoimmune disease, can strike both infants and adults. However, the disease manifests itself in adulthood and before the age of 40 in six out of ten cases. It is characterized by muscle weakness that worsens with physical exertion but improves with rest. This weakness is often more pronounced at the end of the day,” says the AFM Téléthon website.

In half of the cases, the first symptoms affect the eyes before affecting other muscles. However, the progression of the disease is very difficult to predict and varies greatly from person to person. There may be periods of worsening and improvement, but “during exacerbations, the disease can become severely worse and become life-threatening,” according to the website dedicated to genetic diseases. I BGNES