Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome ( OSAS ) is a chronic disease of sleep-disordered breathing characterized by repeated collapse of part or all of the upper respiratory tract during sleep. Its clinical manifestations include fragmentation of sleeping, severe snoring, and excessive daytime sleepiness. Because of its high incidence and ability to affect the quality of life and survival rate of patients, increasingly more people have been attaching clinical importance to OSAS. Many recent studies have shown that OSAS is characterized by inflammation, and changes in the levels of inflammatory-related factors suggest the possibility that OSAS is complicated by cardiovascular disease. The potential relationship between OSAS and inflammation is demonstrated by the presence of common risk factors between the two conditions as well as several common pathogenicity approaches. Therefore, this study was performed to summarize the research progress on the correlation between OSAS and inflammation and thus increase our understanding of the pathogenesis of OSAS.