Variations in a gene helped shield adults who had endured child abuse from becoming depressed as adults, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that helps explain how nature and nurture give rise to mental illness.

And a British team has found that pregnant women who have a major emotional loss in the early months of pregnancy give birth to babies with a higher risk of schizophrenia.

The studies, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, add to a growing understanding of how genetics and environmental distress sometimes act together to produce mental illness.

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