Abstract: Lai Meiling, Ge Xiaoli, Zhang Haiping, Zhou Chenglong, Zhang Xiaoli, Yang Lijia Department of Dermatology, Wuxi No.2 People′s Hospital, Wuxi 214000, China （Lai ML, Zhang HP, Zhou CL, Zhang XL, Yang LJ）; Department of Pediatrics, Wuxi No. 2 People′s Hospital, Wuxi 214000, China （Ge XL） Corresponding authors: Zhang Xiaoli, Email: zxl415@163.com; Yang Lijia, Email: yanglijia726@163.com 【Abstract】 Objective To evaluate the reliability and clinical practicality of colony PCR in rapid detection of pathogenic fungi causing tinea capitis. Methods Totally, 17 children with tinea capitis were enrolled from the Department of Dermatology of Wuxi No. 2 People′s Hospital between January 2016 and March 2017. Colony PCR was performed to detect pathogenic fungi. The results of colony PCR were compared with those of routine PCR and morphological identification, so as to evaluate the reliability of colony PCR in the identification of pathogenic fungi causing tinea capitis. Results After clinical specimens （broken hairs and scales） from the 17 patients were subjected to fungal culture, the mycelia were collected and successfully amplified by colony PCR. The time of clony PCR （mean, 3.82 ± 0.50 days） for DNA template preparation was short than that of traditional morphological identification （14 days）. Based on the results of conventional PCR, the accuracy of colony PCR for fungal identification was 100%, which was superior to that of conventional PCR （88.2%）. Conclusions Colony PCR can be applied to the clinical detection of pathogenic fungi causing tinea capitis at specy level, and is a kind of rapid, economic and reliable molecular detection technique.

Key words: Tinea capitis, Polymerase chain reaction, Microsporum, Trichophyton, Colony PCR