In-medium modification of the eta mass is discussed in the context of partial restoration of chiral symmetry in nuclear medium. We emphasize that the U_A(1) anomaly effects causes the eta-eta mass difference necessarily through the chiral symmetry breaking. As a consequence, the eta mass is expected to be reduced by order of 100 MeV in nuclear matter where about 30% reduction of chiral symmetry takes place. The strong attraction relating to the eta mass generation eventually implies that there should be also a strong attractive interaction in the scalar channel of the eta-N two-body system. We find that the attraction can be strong enough to form a bound state.