A drug meant to fight bone loss could also help you battle cancer.

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine today says there’s now more evidence that taking medicine to combat bone loss could actually reduce your chances of cancer spreading or recurring by up to a third. The study looked at 1,803 premenopausal women with tumors fueled by estrogen. Half were treated with the bone drug zoledronic acid (Zometa) in addition to their regular cancer drugs for three years. Those patients had a 36-percent reduction in cancer recurrences and metastases than those treated with something else. Other studies are testing the drugs in patients with prostate or lung cancer.

The addition of zoledronic acid "resulted in an absolute reduction of 3.2 percentage points and a relative reduction of 36 percent in the risk of disease progression," the study said. "The addition of zoledronic acid to adjuvant endocrine therapy improves disease-free survival in premenopausal patients with estrogen-responsive early breast cancer."

Sound like good news? It is, but don’t expect it to be fully available quite yet.

"This is really a landmark study," Dr. James N. Ingle, head of the breast cancer research program at the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, told The New York Times. "It’s a reason for real enthusiasm … but it is the general consensus that we are not ready to make this a standard treatment."