"&" Vs "&";

Hello,

I found many posts regarding encoding but none that could solve my problem.

I have the following issue with special character & only:
1. when I have the character & in my sql table, I see it as & in my datatable
2. but when I edit the same item from the datable, although I still see it as & in my datatable, it stores & in mysql table
3. as a result, for example, in the select fields using this value, I can see & and not &

The table and data are set to utf8mb4_general_ci

I also added utf-8 in the config.php file:

$sql_details = array(
    "type" => "",
    "user" => "",
    "pass" => "",
    "host" => "",
    "port" => "",
    "db"   => "",
    "dsn"  => "charset=utf8"
);

Any idea where it could come from?