No, they don’t literally suck the fat from your waistline, but Scienceblog.com does show how roundworms are beating the battle of the bulge:
A previously unknown mutation discovered in a common roundworm holds the promise of new treatments for obesity in humans, McGill University researchers say. Their study was published Dec. 3 in the journal Nature, and was funded by the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
In lean times, a normal Caenorhabditis elegans worm goes into a form of suspended animation called “dauer” that slows its metabolism and allows it to survive for extended periods without food.
“When they go into dauer, these worms radically alter their metabolism,” said Dr. Richard Roy, a cancer researcher at McGill’s Department of Biology….
The trick is getting humans to go into dauer – and halting the need to eat. But not exactly like the worms… not the *normal* worms, anyway:
“These mutants somehow cannot shut down the process of cell division, which is why we noticed them in the first place,” Roy said. “However, that’s not what kills them. They cannot adjust their metabolism correctly. They store up their six-month lipid reserves, but as soon as they shift into dauer they use them up within a few days. This is because they lack an enzyme that blocks the activity of a very important triglyceride lipase. Without this regulation the lipase burns up all the fat it encounters and destroys the worm’s energy reserves.”
Yeah. Mutant worm weight therapy.