Direct detection of the PCR, or DD-PCR is proposed as an efficient method for performing PCR assays. Following the PCR reaction, ethidium homodimer dye is added to the reaction mixture and read by fluorescence. The dye step circumvents the necessity of running reactions on agarose gel electrophoresis, which is the current standard. This simple modification should find wide application for assays utilizing the PCR reaction. Here we show the ready detection of HLA class II polymorphism.