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Confronted with a funky toenail, many physicians diagnose fungus infection and seek to prove it by potassium hydroxide (KOH)–assisted microscopic examination or culture of material from under the nail plate. While microscopy is quick, its sensitivity is low. An inexpert microscopist may fail to see fungus, or the detected material might be a nonpathogenic fungus, yeast, or mold. Culture is more sensitive and specific, but it takes 1 to 2 weeks before the material grows. Several groups have previously used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests to identify fungi. In these studies, DNA extraction had not been automated, and amplification products underwent blotting, sequencing, restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, or molecular we…