Dermatophytic infection of skin has become an increasing and common problem in population and are found in keratinized layers of skin, nail and hair causing superficial mycoses. Dermatophytic infection of skin is easy to diagnose clinically and microbiological diagnosis is important to confirm the etiology before starting the treatment. Diagnosis can be confirmed by microscopy and culture. Microscopic examination of the skin scrapping and the nail can be performed as an outpatient basis but has low sensitivity. Culture of the fungus takes 4-6 weeks because of the slow growth of the organism.  Molecular methods using RTPCR has been developed to overcome this problem. The dermatophyte can rapidly be diagnosed by RT-PCR as they have the advantage of high sensitivity and specificity and faster turnaround time over the other conventional methods and is more accurate for the diagnosis.

Patients with extensive dermatophytic infection of the skin can have dermatophytes in the nails due to chronic itching which can be easily missed on clinical examination. These patients may not respond to treatment with conventional dose and duration of antifungals used and they may have periodic recurrences.

In such patients, microscopy with potassium hydroxide (KOH) and culture may not reveal the dermatophytes due to poor sensitivity, specificity and so, the detection of the dermatophytes in the nails are often missed.

In such patients, PCR being more sensitive and specific can be a better technique to detect the fungus in the nail.

So, we plan to conduct a study to detect dermatophytes in patients with uninvolved nails by PCR in people who are having KOH-positive skin dermatophyte infection.