The Food and Drug Adminis­tration (FDA) has cleared the Aries C. difficile assay, a moderate complexity, sample-to-answer test for rapid detection of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile). Using real-time polymerase chain reaction, this test detects bacterial genes for both toxin A and toxin B, which may reduce the probability of a false negative result from strains that only produce toxin A. The assay is designed to run on the Aries system, which automates all aspects of testing, offers flexible batch sizes, and provides results in less than 2 hours. The Aries system can also run in multiple laboratory shifts and enables labs to perform FDA-authorized and laboratory-developed tests simultaneously with its universal assay protocol.