Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease affecting nearly 10% of US children and is the most common reason for pediatric hospital admissions nationally. African Americans are disproportionally affected. Uncovering modifiable risk factors for poor asthma control, and treating them, is essential to decreasing asthma burden. Sleep apnea may be a modifiable risk factor. It occurs in about 4% of children overall, but in nearly a third of children with asthma. Asthma and sleep apnea are both inflammatory disorders, and share several risk factors Some evidence suggests that treatment of sleep apnea improves asthma control, suggesting a role for sleep apnea-associated inflammation in the onset of asthma exacerbations. The one airway hypothesis, which hypothesizes that local and systemic inflammatory processes in one part of the respiratory tract can be generalized throughout the respiratory tract, was used as the conceptual model for this study. We tested whether upper airway and systemic inflammation increased in non-obese children aged 5-11 years with persistent asthma who had increasingly severe sleep apnea, and whether inflammation was associated with asthma control. Ten children were to be recruited per group based on sleep apnea severity. Airway inflammation was measured by cytokines in the tonsils harvested during scheduled tonsillectomy (sleep apnea groups). Systemic inflammation was measured by the same cytokines in serum. Asthma control was measured by spirometry, and the Childhood Asthma Control Test (cACT). The study protocol was conducted the morning of tonsillectomy for the sleep apneas group, and a blood draw was scheduled for controls. We hypothesized that as sleep apnea severity increased, cytokines would increase, and that as airway and systemic inflammation increased, asthma control would decrease.