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Highlights • We studied the psychiatric morbidity and the protracted symptoms in recently recovered COVID-19 patients • We also looked at potential factors that might influence psychiatric morbidity • Significant symptoms of posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression were found • PTSD symptom severity was the sole independent predictor of the presence of protracted symptoms, We investigated the psychiatric symptomatology and the protracted symptoms in patients who had recovered from the acute COVID-19 infection. Two hundred and eighty-four patients completed a web-based or a paper survey on socio-demographic and clinical data. The psychiatric status was assessed using Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and MINI suicidality scale. Patients completed a checklist for the protracted symptoms that were experienced after the acute infection. After a mean of almost 50 days following the diagnosis, 98 patients (34.5%) reported clinically significant PTSD, anxiety, and/or depression, with PTSD being the most common condition reported (25.4%). One hundred and eighteen patients (44.3%) reported one or more protracted symptom(s). Predictors of PTSD symptom severity were the female gender, past traumatic events, protracted symptoms, stigmatization, and a negative view on the COVID-19 pandemic. PTSD symptom severity was the sole independent predictor of the protracted symptoms. Our results suggest that COVID-19 patients are prone to substantial psychological distress in the first few months after the infection. The protracted symptoms were frequent in this period, and these were closely related to the posttraumatic symptoms.

The development of robust and efficient cell factories requires understanding of the metabolic changes triggered by the production of the targeted compound. Here we aimed to study how production of p-coumaric acid, a precursor of multiple secondary aromatic metabolites, influences the cellular metabolism of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We evaluated the growth and p-coumaric acid production in batch and chemostat cultivations and analyzed the transcriptome and intracellular metabolome during steady state in low- and high-producers of p-coumaric acid in two strain backgrounds, S288c or CEN.PK. We found that the same genetic modifications resulted in higher production of p-coumaric acid in the CEN.PK background than in the S288c background. Moreover, the CEN.PK strain was less affected by the genetic engineering as was evident from fewer changes in the transcription profile and intracellular metabolites concentrations. Surprisingly, for both strains we found the largest transcriptional changes in genes involved in transport of amino acids and sugars, which were downregulated. Additionally, in S288c amino acid and protein biosynthesis processes were also affected. We systematically overexpressed or deleted genes with significant transcriptional changes in CEN.PK low and high-producing strains. The knockout of some of the downregulated transporters triggered a 20-50% improvement in the synthesis of p-CA in the CEN.PK high-producing strain. This study demonstrates the importance of transporters in the engineering of cell factories for production of small molecules.