Consistent with a central role for astrocyte dysfunction in myelin loss, in an animal model of the demyelinating leukodystrophy vanishing white matter disease (Dooves et al., 2016) the pathology was suggested to reflect mutations in the eukaryotic translation initiation factors EIF2B1-EIF2B5 (Leegwater et al., 2001; Van Der Knaap et al., 2002) in astrocytes. This evidence concerns the gene EIF2B5 and leukodystrophy.