What potential security risks are associated with directly inserting user-inputted HTML content into a database without validation or sanitization?

Directly inserting user-inputted HTML content into a database without validation or sanitization can lead to various security risks such as SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, and potential data corruption. To mitigate these risks, it is essential to validate and sanitize the user input before inserting it into the database.

// Validate and sanitize user input before inserting into the database
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$clean_input = htmlspecialchars($user_input);
// Perform database query with the sanitized input
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (column_name) VALUES ('$clean_input')";
// Execute the query
// mysqli_query($connection, $query);