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From folklore to science

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Is it possible for an outdated piece of information to be the key to a new revolutionary solution? Can mythical folklore and beliefs sometimes turn out to be medically proven and viable treatments for modern day health problems?
 

This of course depends on the cause and treatment, but it is exactly what happened when Dr. Pirjo Pärnänen decided to research whether you could fight oral yeast infections with a very simple organic ingredient: the common Finnish lingonberry.

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It all started from private practice

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​Dr Pärnänen is an associate professor in oral microbiology with an MD in dentistry and a PhD in biochemistry. Up until a few years ago, she was still running her own private dental practice in Kontula, East Helsinki. “It all began at that practice which I ran in Kontula for roughly 30 years” she says. “While I was treating patients, I started to wonder why it is that some people get yeast infections in their mouth, and others don’t”. She immediately noticed a strong link to asthma medications and dry mouth. She also knew that in the olden days it was common practice in Finland to treat these symptoms with lingonberries picked from forests, so she wondered whether she could help her patients in a similar way.

Since Dr. Pärnänen has a degree in both dentistry and biochemistry, she had easy access to the research laboratories of Helsinki University. There she began to examine the effects of lingonberry against yeast infection using modern western medicine methods.

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“I started with basic laboratory tests, through which I concluded that this kind of treatment was not mythical folklore after all.” The essential part of her now-patented method is reducing the lingonberries’ natural sugars to just a fraction of the original by fermentation. This way the positive impact of the berry can be brought to light. “After this discovery, I moved on to clinical trials with human test subjects. They used my fermented lingonberry mouthwash for varying test periods, six months at the most, after which I compared the results. This was a significant experiment, since this kind of human trial has never before been conducted in this precise field of study.

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The beginning of cooperation

When the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published a story about Dr. Pärnänen’s research and the patented mouthwash in 2019, the revolutionary idea caught the eye of many distribution companies. Enquiries about potential collaborations began to flood in, but she refused every single offer, as she had decided to produce the product herself and launch the brand through her own enterprise. She did, after all, have a loyal customer base that was already purchasing the mouthwash from her practice in Kontula. However, one particular entrepreneur never gave up in spite of her refusals. “His persistence stood out and the fact that he was very serious about a potential collaboration. He also offered a viable solution to my problem, which was trying to increase production volume significantly, and I wouldn’t have been able to do this on my own” admits Dr. Pärnänen.

The persistent entrepreneur in question is Ville Heinonen from East Helsinki. He quickly turned out to be the perfect business partner for Dr. Pärnänen, largely because they are both famous for their organic berry products. They joined forces to found the new enterprise, Berries United, and launched Dr. Pärnänen’s Lingora®.

“When it comes to the broad range of opportunities with this product, we are merely at the beginning”, says Ville Heinonen. “For example, oral yeast infections are also very common in animals, so we are constantly reviewing the possibilities of lingonberry for treating animals too.” And it’s not just all about mouthwash either, there are tons of products in the groceries department that could benefit from an addition of Lingora®.

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From the laboratory to the store shelf

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Although the story of Lingora® so far is easy to fit into a few paragraphs, the road to success has not been an easy one. Ever since her first ideas and experiments, Pirjo Pärnänen has worked tirelessly to perfect her product over the past 15 years. “Had I known in the beginning how difficult and complex the process would be, I probably wouldn’t have even started it” she says smiling.

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Fortunately for Dr. Pärnänen, the Foundation for Finnish Inventions and the Innovation Services at the University of Helsinki were willing to support her new venture from the start. With their help, she was able to advance her studies to clinical trials which she carried out alongside her colleague Sari Niikko. “I was working three jobs in parallel” Dr. Pärnänen reminisces. “I had my dental practice in Kontula, I was studying, and I worked in the lab to perfect and patent my lingonberry invention. If you really want to launch a product such as this, you just need to be persistent. But it’s here now, and everything is working well. I feel rewarded every single time a customer contacts me to inquire about where they can buy the product.”