A proportion of Chinese Shar-Pei suffer from recurrent febrile episodes, sometimes termed Shar-Pei Fever. Some of these dogs may go on to develop amyloidosis, which can cause irreversible kidney failure. At present there is no test to identify puppies that might ultimately go on to develop Shar-Pei fever, to identify patients who have an ambiguous diagnosis, or to test for carriers of the gene(s) responsible. The purpose of this study is to: 1) develop a clinically useful biological test that will identify afflicted patients and puppies that will go on to develop disease, and may eventually be used to monitor patients on therapy; 2) characterize some of the mediators of inflammation that cause the clinical signs; 3) characterize immune system disorders that have been described in Shar-Pei to determine if these disorders are related to Shar-Pei Fever. Simultaneous with this study, a search for the gene(s) involved in the disorder is being carried out at the National Institutes of Health, which can be used to identify both carriers and affected animals early in life. We anticipate that our results will help to focus that effort by providing a better characterization of the disease.