I skimmed the first five articles Google found, they seem to disagree.
All five were less than 40 years old
All of them showed "somewhat less than 10%" longer lives for the rats and spun that same number in varying ways from "almost no difference" to "considerable lifespan extension" depending, I think, on how much the authors hate rats.
All the studies showed dramatically increased healthspans and much lower decline in rat-performance and quality-of-rat-life thru the rat's lifespan. Or rephrased there wasn't much difference in performance between young exercise rats and young non-exercise rats but a huge difference in performance between old exercise rats and old non-exercise rats. Clearly, if I were a rat, and I dodge traps until I'm old, I'd prefer being an exercise rat. I question how well this study transfers to humans as there's obvious staggering difference in performance between young lazy humans and young "gym rats" (LOL at that pun). I would theorize a bored rat running on a wheel is vastly less motivated than a highly motivated human weight lifter or similar gym user, and that should result in much better QoL for old human "gym-rats". Anecdotal evidence seems to strongly confirm...
The studies all seemed to agree that exercise did not increase maximal lifespan very much if at all.
Depending on which side of the axe you'd prefer to grind, the articles seem to summarize to some variation on "some rats that don't exercise die young" vs "rats on average live about five percent longer if they exercise". Aside from the side issue where some studies report 5% as not much different and others report 5% as a dramatic increase depending, as I stated, on how much the author hates rats. It's literally the same shape graph in all five separate studies, its just selecting the conclusion you'd like to describe that graph.
All five were less than 40 years old
All of them showed "somewhat less than 10%" longer lives for the rats and spun that same number in varying ways from "almost no difference" to "considerable lifespan extension" depending, I think, on how much the authors hate rats.
All the studies showed dramatically increased healthspans and much lower decline in rat-performance and quality-of-rat-life thru the rat's lifespan. Or rephrased there wasn't much difference in performance between young exercise rats and young non-exercise rats but a huge difference in performance between old exercise rats and old non-exercise rats. Clearly, if I were a rat, and I dodge traps until I'm old, I'd prefer being an exercise rat. I question how well this study transfers to humans as there's obvious staggering difference in performance between young lazy humans and young "gym rats" (LOL at that pun). I would theorize a bored rat running on a wheel is vastly less motivated than a highly motivated human weight lifter or similar gym user, and that should result in much better QoL for old human "gym-rats". Anecdotal evidence seems to strongly confirm...
The studies all seemed to agree that exercise did not increase maximal lifespan very much if at all.
Depending on which side of the axe you'd prefer to grind, the articles seem to summarize to some variation on "some rats that don't exercise die young" vs "rats on average live about five percent longer if they exercise". Aside from the side issue where some studies report 5% as not much different and others report 5% as a dramatic increase depending, as I stated, on how much the author hates rats. It's literally the same shape graph in all five separate studies, its just selecting the conclusion you'd like to describe that graph.