  We investigate the effect of repulsive interaction between hadrons on the
specific heat ($C_V$), isothermal compressibility ($\kappa_{T}$) and the speed
of sound ($C_s^2$) of hot and dense hadronic matter. The repulsive interactions
are included through a mean-field approach where the single particle energy
picks correction term due to mean field interactions between hadrons. This
correction term is proportional to the number density of hadrons. We assume
different mean-field interactions for mesons and baryons. We also confront
$C_V$ and $C_s^2$ with existing lattice QCD simulation results. We find that
the repulsive interactions have very strong effect on $C_V$ and $C_s^2$ while
its effect on $\kappa_T$ is very mild. This effect is especially dominant at
high temperature and baryon chemical potential. We find an excellent match of
our results with those obtained from lattice simulations. We finally discuss
the implications of our results in the context of heavy-ion collision
experiments.
