Green banking practices, bank reputation, and environmental awareness: evidence from Islamic banks in a developing economy.

Fulfilling the international considerations of environment, societal, and governance challenges, the financial industry, especially banks, has initiated "Go Green" practices to help sustain the environment and enhance "banking" across the globe. Amidst the green and climate-friendly drives, there is scarce literature highlighting the banks' green practices, environmental awareness, and their effects on bank reputation, especially the reputation of Islamic banks. This study aims to investigate the green banking practices of Islamic banks in a developing Islamic country. Focusing on the greening ambitions of banks, this study argues that the reputation of Islamic banks can be better enhanced through adopting green banking initiatives that will beget better climatic outcomes in Muslim societies. Therefore, the study illumes green banking practices and their impact on the reputation of Islamic banks in Pakistan. Moreover, this study checks the moderation effect of employees' environmental awareness on banks' reputation. The study used deductive rationale and quantified the employees' data to unravel their go-green perceptions and bank green activities. In this regard, the 390 response data, collected through a survey from the employees of Islamic banks, were analyzed through Smart-PLS, using structural equation modeling technique. The study finds that banks' employees-related practices (ERPs), daily operations-related practices (DORPs), customers-related practices (CRPs), and banks' policy-related practices (PRPs) have a significant positive influence on bank reputation. The authors also find that there is a significant moderating impact of environmental awareness between the relationships of ERPs, DORPs, CRPs, PRPs, and bank reputation. The study might increase understating and enlighten regulators and bank management to sustainably transform their operations to green banking practices, particularly adding to the environmental sustainability in Pakistan.

Health economic evaluation of different treatment strategies for peripheral entrapment mononeuropathies: a systematic review.

Introduction: In this era of cost-conscious health systems, it is of utmost importance to identify and establish the most cost-effective treatment option. However, in the case of peripheral entrapment mononeuropathies there is alack of data regarding economically effective treatment strategies. Therefore, the objective was to conduct an economic evaluation including both costs and benefits of various treatment strategies applied to peripheral entrapment mononeuropathies to estimate the relative cost-effective treatment regimens.Areas covered: Over the 19 years, seven excellent-high quality economic evaluations of three types of peripheral entrapment mononeuropathies were identified in four countries. Our findings showed that surgery was the most cost-effective therapy followed by same cost efficacy of infiltrative therapy and conservative therapy for peripheral entrapment mononeuropathies. However, the fact that surgery was the most common comparator (n = 6) in our selected studies cannot be neglected.Expert opinion: Due to huge methodological variability, the finding of surgery as the cost-effective treatment strategy remains tentative and the decision about the most suitable clinical and cost-effective therapy should be individualized from case to case. Moreover, the economic evaluation of all possible treatment strategies for peripheral entrapment mononeuropathies over alonger period of analysis is required in future studies.

Adverse drug event of hypokalaemia-induced cardiotoxicity secondary to the use of laxatives: A systematic review of case reports.

WHAT IS KNOWN AND OBJECTIVE: The imbalance in serum potassium caused by laxatives can negatively affect the cardiovascular system, leading to life-threatening consequences. Our objective was to evaluate the reported evidence of adverse events related to the cardiac system due to laxative-induced hypokalaemia from case reports. METHODS: A systematic electronic literature search of PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library and Science Direct was conducted for the period 1995-2019. In these databases, search terms describing hypokalaemia and cardiotoxicity were combined with the term laxative use. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Over the 23 years, 27 incidents were identified in 12 countries. There were 19 female and eight male patients, with ages ranging from 1 month to 93 years. The frequency of reported cases according to severity was the following: severe hypokalaemia 48%, moderate hypokalaemia 44.4% and mild hypokalaemia 7.4%. In 70% of patients, the effect of laxative on the heart was typical hypokalaemic electrographic changes, 7.4% showed abnormal changes in cardiac rhythm, whereas in 18.5%, the cardiotoxicity observed was a very serious kind. Two patients died due to severe cardiac effects. WHAT IS NEW AND CONCLUSION: The laxatives-along with the involvement of some other contributing factors-caused mild-to-severe hypokalaemic cardiotoxicity. These factors were non-adherence of the patient to the recommended dosage, laxative abuse, drug-drug and drug-disease interactions, non-potassium electrolyte imbalances and the use of herbal laxatives. We recommend that laxatives and aggravating factors should be taken into account in the assessment of patients with suspected hypokalaemic cardiotoxicity.

Evaluation of the Effect of Atenolol Induced Depression in Cardiac Output on Its Own Excretion through Urine Analysis.

The role of Pharmacist in making the therapeutic decisions for safe and effective therapy is increasing all over the world. However, there are many aspects of drugs in making these decisions that are less commonly studied such as the correlation of cardiac output with pharmacokinetics of drugs. The cardiac output, besides the other factors, is also affected by drugs like atenolol. Therefore, the objective of the present open labeled study was to know the effect of reduced cardiac output induced by atenolol on its own excretion parameters. After taking the informed consent, five healthy volunteers were selected for the study. Atenolol tablet at a dose of 50 mg, 75 mg and 100 mg for three consecutive days were given to all the volunteers. The echocardiography and renal function clinical tests were conducted prior and 5 h after dosing and the urine samples were collected at 5 and 10 h post dosing. The prepared samples were analyzed for atenolol by High-Performance Liquid chromatography. For comparison of atenolol excretion for three days, One-way repeated measure Analysis of Variance statistical test was used as Wilks' Lambda = 0.2, F (2, 3) = 5.986, p < 0.1, multivariate partial squared = 0.8. These results showed that atenolol affects its own pharmacokinetics by prolonging its excretion half-life.

Clinical pharmacokinetics of drugs in cardiopulmonary associated cachexia without hepatorenal pathology: a systematic review.

Cachexia not only has a dramatically harmful impact on a patient's life, but also a poor response to therapeutic agents. The purpose of the present review is to provide updated information concerning the pharmacokinetic aspects of drugs used to treat cardiopulmonary cachexia in patients with no signs of hepatic or renal pathology. A systematic search of PubMed, the Cochrane Central Register of Control Trials, Science Direct, and Clinical Trials Registry (ClinicalTrials.gov), encompassing the period between 2000 and 2017, was conducted in accordance to PRISMA guidelines. Seven studies were identified. Collectively, these studies included a total of 196 individuals (19 healthy subjects and 177 diseased patients). This data review found no differences in bisoprolol and prothionamide absorption in cachectic patients with chronic heart failure and tuberculosis, but higher absorption of oflaxocin in the same set of patients was observed. The distribution of bisoprolol, prothionmaide, ceftazidime, and cefipirome was reduced in cardiopulmonary cachexia patients. Hepatic clearance of rifampin was equivalent in cachectic and non-cachectic patients that had normal hepatic function. Similarly in cardiopulmonary cachexia patients, renal clearance of ceftazidime was reduced by 19% but no significant differences in bisorpolol and prothionamide clearance were observed. In the case of cefipirome, both renal clearance and creatinine clearance were higher in cachectic patients with cystic fibrosis. From the limited evidence available, the main drug pharmacokinetic changes seen in cardiopulmonary cachexia patients were a reduction in the volume of distribution and impairment of clearance.

Fixed point results for generalized Chatterjea type contractive conditions in partially ordered G-metric spaces.

In the framework of ordered G-metric spaces, fixed points of maps that satisfy the generalized (ψ, φ)-Chatterjea type contractive conditions are obtained. The results presented in the paper generalize and extend several well known comparable results in the literature.