What potential issue can arise from using reserved words like "alter" in MySQL queries?

Using reserved words like "alter" in MySQL queries can lead to syntax errors or unexpected behavior because the database may interpret the word as a command rather than a column name or value. To avoid this issue, you can enclose the reserved word in backticks (`) to indicate that it should be treated as a column name or value.

$query = "SELECT `alter` FROM table_name";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Fetch data from the result
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    // Process the data
}