Common treatments with indigenous Iranian plants for routine pediatric diseases and disorders

Abstract

Children, especially newborns, are the most vulnerable human subpopulation. They may develop important and routine disorders and diseases, such as abdominal pain and upset stomach, diarrhea, constipation, headache, fever, skin inflammation, cough, pain, and restlessness. To date, the use of medicinal plants and herbal products in the treatment of diseases in children and infants has not yet been adequately studied.  Hence, in the present study, we tried to report medicinal plants used in cultures and traditions of different regions of Iran to treat common diseases of children.  The information in this review article was obtained by searching for relevant articles by the keywords ethnobotany, traditional medicine, medicinal plants, pediatrics, neonates, diseases and disorders indexed in databases such as ISI, PubMed, Scopus, Google scholar, and also SID, Magiran as the most important Iranian databases. The articles were screened, and relevant articles were reviewed. Irrelevant articles were excluded. Related articles were reviewed based on the title, abstract and results section of that article. According to Iranian ethnobotanical evidence, medicinal plants such as Cichorium pumilium, Anethum graveolens, Amaranthus refroflexus, Olea europaea L., Ziziphus jujuba, Cotoneaster persicus, Artemisia annua, Alhagi persarum, Nigella sativa, Astragalus adscendens, Adiantum capillus-veneris L. are among the most promising medicinal plants used in Iranian traditional medicine for treatment of neonatal disorders. Based on the results, the most used herbal family belonged to the Asteraceae. Also, the plant organ of the leaf with 31% was the highest organ used in the ethnobotanical knowledge of Iran for common neonatal diseases.