  We investigate fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in hot hadronic
matter. We discuss the interplay between chiral dynamics and repulsive
interactions and their influence on the properties of these fluctuations near
the chiral crossover. The chiral dynamics is modeled by the parity doublet
Lagrangian that incorporates the attractive and repulsive interactions mediated
via the exchange of scalar and vector mesons, respectively. The mean-field
approximation is employed to account for chiral criticality. We focus on the
properties and systematics of the cumulants of the net-baryon number density up
to the sixth order. It is shown that the higher-order cumulants exhibit a
substantial suppression in the vicinity of the chiral phase transition due to
the presence of repulsive interactions. We find, however, that the
characteristic properties of cumulants near the chiral crossover observed in
lattice QCD results are entirely linked to the critical chiral dynamics and, in
general, cannot be reproduced in phenomenological models, which account only
for effective repulsive interactions via excluded-volume corrections or
van-der-Waals type interactions. Consequently, a description of the
higher-order cumulants of the net-baryon density in the chiral crossover
requires a self-consistent treatment of the chiral in-medium effects and
repulsive interactions.
