Actor John Travolta says that his son, who was found dead last week, suffered from this inflammatory disorder. Did it play a role in the teen's death?

Doctors today performed an autopsy on Jett Travolta, the 16-year-old son of actors John Travolta and Kelly Preston, who died Friday. The results were not immediately released.

Preston said six years ago that Jett became very ill at age two and was diagnosed with Kawasaki syndrome, a rare inflammatory condition most common in young children. She and Travolta blamed Kawasaki syndrome for what they described as Jett's developmental disabilities, according to CNN.

Kawaski syndrome is most common in Japan and is 1.5 times more common in boys. In the continental U.S., it affects nine to 19 in 100,000 children, 85 percent of them younger than five years old.

Walter Molofsky, chief of pediatric neurology at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, talked about Kawasaki syndrome and its possible role in Jett Travolta's death.

What is Kawasaki syndrome?
It first presented in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Japan. It's an inflammatory, autoimmune disorder (in which the immune system attacks healthy tissue in the body), but we're not quite clear of the cause. It could be a specific reaction to a virus or some sort of infectious agent, but none has been identified. However, it has some features consistent with an infectious cause: It occurs mostly in winter and spring, it's usually among toddlers and rarely in children under three months or in adults.

What are the symptoms?
A high fever above 101 for more than five days, severe redness in the eyes, a rash on the stomach and chest, red, cracked, dry lips, swollen tongue, sore throat and swollen lymph nodes.

Seizures are very uncommon. Maybe during the acute episode during a high fever; fevers themselves can cause seizures sometimes.

Kawasaki syndrome is not believed to be one of the etiologies of autism. Autism is a congenital, neuro-developmental disorder, which means you are born with it.

What is the treatment for Kawasaki?
The main treatments are to prevent cardiac disease. Patients are usually put on IV gamma globulin, a mixture of antibody proteins that fights inflammation and help fight infection by boosting the immune system, for a week to 10 days, and usually put on aspirin, to prevent inflammation, for years.