Heartrending Condition: The Baby Who Can’t Be Hugged Due to Rare Vascular Hardening Disorder. An

Seven-month-old Casen Buswell suffers from Glomuvenous malformations plaque type that causes his blood vessels, skin and muscles to harden.

It is caused by a missing glomulin gene and will only get worse as he gets older. If left untreated, it can eventually lead to heart failure.

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His mother Jenna Buswell, from Puyallup, Washington, can’t even hug her son for fear it may aggravate his condition and already sensitive skin.

The mother-of-two told ABCNews: ‘It’s progressive, so once the skin starts to harden and thicken it becomes extremely painful.

‘Right now, he is so, so little that we’re noticing that to touch there are areas that are sensitive so we have to be careful about how we place him.’

When baby Casen was born, his tiny body was covered in lesions, but his condition was so rare it wasn’t until several weeks later that doctors could discover what was wrong with him.

Mrs Buswell said: ‘The geneticist pieced it together and on a whim notified a few other doctors about it.

‘A specialist husband and wife doctor team in Belgium were eventually notified and they identified the gene Casen is missing.’

Dr Miikka Vikkula and his wife Dr Laurence Boon, who are both based in Belgium, have established a treatment for the condition involving laser treatments.

Casen will need monthly laser treatments up until the age of three to prevent his body from hardening and hopefully give him a chance of a normal life.

But the family have had to fundraise thousands of pounds to cover the cost of the flights to Belgium and for his treatment.

Mrs Buswell, who also has a three-year-old daughter Cora, added: ‘My hope is he is able to do all the things little boys should do. Run around, ride his bike, play with his sister and grow up and live a fairly normal life.’