John Travolta's Son Dies At Age Sixteen

On Friday morning in The Bahamas, John Travolta's son, Jett, died in the family's vacation home. According to the family's lawyer, it was a seizure-related incident. The family, including Jett Travolta's mother, Kelly Preston, and his younger eight year-old sister, Ella, were celebrating the New Year in The Bahamas

Travolta's attorney, Michael Ossi , who was also in The Bahamas, told ABC.com, "A nanny attempted to revive him, all attempts were made, but he couldn't be revived. They tried as hard as they could to revive Jett."

The teenager "has had seizures in the past, but they were controlled. This one couldn't be," Ossi added. That was only part of the story. Loretta Mackey, spokeswoman of the Royal Bahamas Police Force told the Associated Press that Jett Travolta hit his head in the bathtub, causing his death.

Jett Travolta's mother disclosed that he had had a poorly understood condition known as Kawaski syndrome, a collection of symptoms that stem from swollen arteries. Inflammation from Kawaski syndrome can lead to convulsions and seizures. Children under the age of five are primarily affected, though it can occur in older children. About nine out of 100,000 children have Kawaski syndrome, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kawaski syndrom can occur among any ethnicity, but higher among Japanese and Korean children.

KS expert, Dr. Robert Frenck, said that Kawaski syndrome isn't usually associated with deadly seizures, especially in children who already have recovered from KS, which is said to be a temporary condition. "If there's a major complication, and if someone dies from it, it is a [coronary] aneurysm," he said. "It doesn't happen frequently, but that is what we really worry about. ... That can set the kids up for a heart attack."

The New York Post and many other media outlets suggested in past reports that autism is what Travolta's son has, even though the family always maintained that their son's condition was KS. Autism is only associated with seizures.

"There is a relationship between autism and seizures; as many as 40 percent of children and young adults with autism may experience seizure, and adolescence is a particular time of vulnerability," Seattle Children's Hospital's Research Center for Health Services and Behavioral Research's director of child and adolescent psychiatry, Dr. Bryan King said. "There are hormonal changes that could increase the risk of seizure, and certainly there are ongoing brain changes that take place during adolescence, but no one knows why the risk increases in older children."

The family is now greiving and Ossi added that the incident "is the worst pain any parent can experience, the loss of child."