Phytotherapeutic approaches to treatment and prophylaxis in pediatric practice Valentina Petkova 1 , Bozhidarka Hadzhieva 2 , Paraskev Nedialkov 1 1 Faculty of Pharmacy, Medical University – Sofa, Sofa, Bulgaria 2 Medical University – Plovdiv, Plovdiv, Bulgaria Corresponding author: Valentina Petkova (vpetkova@pharmfac.mu-sofa.bg) Received 4 July 2019  ♦  Accepted 18 September 2019  ♦  Published 7 November 2019 Citation: Petkova V, Hadzhieva B, Nedialkov P (2019) Phytotherapeutic approaches to treatment and prophylaxis in pediatric prac- tice. Pharmacia 66(3): 115–119. https://doi.org/10.3897/pharmacia.66.e37954 Abstract Medicinal plants, their extracts and herbal medicinal products occupy a growing share of medicines in the pharmacy worldwide. Historically, the frst medicines were products of plants, as well as some of the most important medicines still in use today. With the development of phytochemistry, as part of the pharmaceutical science, great progress has been made in the isolation and in deter- mining the value of a number of biologically active substances (BAS). Many plants have yielded pure substances (or natural products) that are applied in modern medical practice. Other compounds are potentially useful or have toxic efects. Traditional medicine incorporating many herbal medicines remains an important (and in some cases, the only) form of treatment in some countries, with increasing use in medical practice. On the other hand, the fact that in pediatric patients there is a limitation, mainly moral and ethical, of the number of medications to be administered due to the difculty of conducting clinical trials in children, stimulates the use of herbal medicines of proven quality, efectiveness and safety among this group of patients. Keywords phytotherapeutic, alternative medicines, pediatric, medicinal plants Introduction Phytotherapy is the use of herbal remedies for the treatment and prophylaxis of diseases. Phytotherapy is a scientifcally proven medical practice and thus distinguishes itself from other, more traditional approaches, such as herbal treat- ment which relies on empirical assessment of medicinal plants and which is ofen related to traditional knowledge. (Gupta 2016) Phytotherapy is a part of pharmacology as a scientifcally proven prophylaxis and treatment with phyto products derived from medicinal plants or parts thereof. French physician Henri Leclerc (1870–1955) trans- formed ordinary empiricism into clinical studies. He frst used the term “phytotherapy” in 1913 and published var- Copyright Petkova V et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Pharmacia 66(3): 115–119 DOI 10.3897/pharmacia.66.e37954 Research Article